Outside the Notre- Dame de Paris stands Charlemagne statue
Today it is 1200 years since Charles the Great died ,
the man who broke with the misery that reigned in Europe since the 100 's,
with pestilence , crop failures and divisions between different ethnic groups.
Between 748 and 814 Charlemagne ruled and with him came a new start
for the economy and politics and culture. Charles learned to read as an adult and
because he revived Latin, he influenced the languages of Europe and the education sector,
more than any other .
His empire stretched from northern Spain to Hungary, from the Danish border to northern Italy.
One of his defeat was the Spanish campaign of 778, in the battle against saracenes .
In a previous post I wrote about Roland songs that portray this war and
also talks about Count Ogier , our Ogier the Dane who fought in this battle.
(Ogier the Dane sits down at Kronborg casemates , in Elsinore and sleeping. ,
The day Denmark is in danger he will rise up and save her. Such is the myth .
The myth also says that Ogier the Dane was the son of Gudfred , king of Denmark,
who fought against the Franks
Ogier the dane was captured and had to fight with Charlemagne against the Saracens in Spain .
Here he showed such courage that Charlemagne set him free ,
Ogier wandered on foot back to Denmark , and sat down and fell asleep where today finds the statue. During World War II , during the German occupation of Denmark,
was one of the resistance movements called Ogier the dane But did he really exist ?
In the Roland song he is mentioned a few times as Count Ogier . Roland song is a French hero song, the oldest preserved , the oldest manuscript from the 1100s ,
but since Charlemagne's war against the Saracens took place in 778,
it has probably been sung and written before.
Leif Duprez and Gunnar Carlstedt has done the first metrical translation of Roland Song to Swedish I started looking for where Count Ogier is mentioned , but could not stop reading , an amazing story . Recommended )
Christmas Day in the year 800 Charles the Great was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III in St. Peter's Basilica . The plate he knelt on , it can be seen just inside the church . A large round plate which was near the altar in the first St. Peter's Basilica .
Because Charles the Great encouraged reading and writing properly, the universities arosed, and the writing , the Carolingian minuscel, which became the typeface antiqua, is available today
in our computers, as Times New Roman.
