Halfdan Rasmussen was a Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 poet. He was known for his literary nonsense

Literary nonsense

Literary nonsense is a broad categorization of literature that uses sensical and nonsensical elements to defy language conventions or logical reasoning...

 verse for children and his serious adult writings about social issues and human rights.

Career

Rasmussen was a resistance

Danish resistance movement

The Danish resistance movement was an underground insurgency movement to resist the German occupation of Denmark during World War II. Due to the unusually lenient terms given to Danish people by the Nazi occupation authority, the movement was slower to develop effective tactics on a wide scale...

 fighter during the German occupation

Occupation of Denmark

Nazi Germany's occupation of Denmark began with Operation Weserübung on 9 April 1940, and lasted until German forces withdrew at the end of World War II following their surrender to the Allies on 5 May 1945. Contrary to the situation in other countries under German occupation, most Danish...

 He became very well known and respected as a poet, nearly becoming a national poet of Denmark.
One of his poems, Ikke Bødlen

Ikke Bødlen

Ikke Bødlen is a poem by Halfdan Rasmussen, featured as one of the best poems on Human Rights on a 1979 book published by Amnesty International Denmark....

, was featured as one of the best poems on Human Rights on a 1979 book published by Amnesty International

Amnesty International

Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...

 Denmark, and would be later translated into the first verse of Roger Waters

Roger Waters

George Roger Waters is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. He was a founding member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd, serving as bassist and co-lead vocalist. Following the departure of bandmate Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became the band's lyricist, principal songwriter...

' song Each Small Candle

Each Small Candle

"Each Small Candle" is a song by Roger Waters. It was released on his album In the Flesh Live in 2000. Most of the lyrics were inspired by a news story from the Kosovo war of a Serbian soldier who saw a wounded Albanian woman, left his ranks and helped her....

.

External links

• Who is Who - The story behind Each Small Candle.