Song of Roland Resources

This translation by John O'Hagan goes the archaic route, with some weird verb forms and even weirder spellings. Charlemagne is Carlemaine and Marsile is Marsil or Marsilius, depending on his position in the sentence. And if you like your kings rhyming with rings, this one's for you: in full rhyming gear and raring to go.

A more modern, prose version of the poem.

Go crazy with this detailed background to Carolingian Europe and Charlemagne. Click through lots of primary documents, like excerpts from Einhard's biography of Charlemagne.

Get your low-calorie Song of Roland fix under Section Nine, "Spanish Expedition," of Einhard's biography of Charlemagne. This leaner version is how it really went down.

Frank Cassenti's La Chanson de Roland is a 1978 movie about a group of medieval performers taking their Roland show on the road, although it's more about peasant rights and universal suffering than the poem itself.

Low-key introduction to the poem with some interesting context for Ganelon's revenge/treason.

A fanciful and grisly re-telling of Roland with blue and red oompa loompas. How could this get better?

Interesting article exploring the intersections of history and story in the Song of Roland, with particular focus on the medieval and modern history of Spain.

Note: If you speak French you might get more out of this scene.

This is the oldest and most famous of the Roland manuscripts, and the basis for all modern translations. Click through high-quality images of the manuscript pages, in all the red and green glory of their medieval handwriting. Don't miss the ginormous hole in the parchment in folio 36.

From a medieval French manuscript, this illumination features the "continuous narrative" of medieval art. In other words, everything is drawn in the same frame and no one worries about sequence or size.

Photographs (of variable quality and tilt) of the famous Charlemagne window at Chartres Cathedral in France.

This is Charlemagne's oliphant on display in the treasury at Aachen Cathedral, Germany, dating from c. 1000. Could this be the very horn Roland blew his brains out on? No way to know.

See where it all went down, in relation to the rest of Europe. Saragossa is Zaragoza here and Roncevaux is Roncesvalles. Historical battles are marked with Xs.

Click "La Tapisserie" to read Roland in modern or Old French, complete with tapestry illustrations by creator-enthusiast Dominique Tixhon.

Tune into Luigi Dallapiccolo's 1946 "Rencesvals: Trois Fragments de la Chanson de Roland." This setting follows the 12-tone scale, which is why it sounds kind of spare and screechy. Find a hit-and-miss English translation of the French lyrics here:

Ever wondered how the Song of Roland would sound translated into Norwegian and crooned ballad-style by a punk-rock band? Yeah, neither did we. But the Norwegian folk-metal band Glittertind delivered anyway.

Nova Nova's "Chanson de Roland" mixes Gregorian chant and breathy electronic elements, trying to capture the tragedy of Roland's youthful death.