Rudolf Nilsen

He was born in the district of Vålerenga in Kristiania (present-day Oslo), on 28 February 1901,[1] and was raised at the nearby neighborhood of Tøyen/Grønland in the same city.

An album bearing the same title as his first collection of poetry, På Stengrunn, was popular in the 1970s and still in 2019 there are yearly concerts where the songs are performed.

A child of the working class, Nilsen became part of the left-wing revolutionary movement and joined the organisation Norges Socialdemokratiske Ungdomsforbund (Social Democratic Youth League of Norway), the youth league of the Norwegian Labour Party.

With the help of defence lawyer (and later Secretary-General of the United Nations) Trygve Lie, he avoided sentencing, and was eventually found not guilty and released.

Outside his childhood address of Heimdalsgata nr 26, a public square was named after him in 1952, and a bronze statue of a worker, based on the theme of one of the poems, was erected on that site in 1954.