Idar Handagard


Idar Handagard was a Norwegian physician, botanist, Nynorsk campaigner, temperance activist, and government scholar.
Handagard was born in Kristiansund and grew up there and in Bergen. He received a medical degree in 1905, and in 1907 he received the King's Medal of Merit in gold for a thesis on Norwegian plant names. In the same year, he also received a prize for the first Nynorsk textbook on health education, Mannalikamen og helsa. The book was later republished in many editions.
Handagard's writing and engagement included the Norwegian Landsmål movement, the temperance movement, and a left-wing stance on several social issues. When the Norwegian Writers' Association was founded in 1910, he was elected the association's first chairman. He both admired and wrote about Oscar Nissen, who was leader of both the Norwegian Total Abstinence Society and the Labor Party.
He never practiced as a physician, but was an active and persistent writer, and he wrote more than 50 books and pamphlets, including Doktorboki and Vanlege dykdouk, became involved in the Greenland case, and wrote several short biographies of poets in the series Småskrifter for bokvenner about Ivar Aasen, Kristofer Janson, Johan Herman Wessel, and Henrik Wergeland. He also wrote many collections of poems, and several of his poems were set to music. Handagard was long and actively involved in the temperance movement, including through the Student Temperance Association in Oslo. His motivation was based on Christian ethics, as well as public and medical grounds. He wrote several articles on the history and pioneers of the temperance movement. Handagard became a government scholar in 1932.

Works

Det gamle og det nye aar: nytaarsfantasi i en akt, 1897Under blaat flag: sange og tendens-digte, 1900
  • "Fosna-maale: eit norskt bymaal," in: Syn og Segn, 1901Sange sub rosa og andre digte, 1902Mannalikamen og helsa, 1907Saftbogen: en veiledning for husmødre, 1912Doktarboki: ei rettleiding fyr folket, 1913Det nye samfund, 1914En samfunds-idé og dens digtere, 1915; vol. 1: Wergeland og Welhaven og deres stilling til ædruelighetsarbeide, vol 2: Fem folkedigtere: John Dahl, Ole Sneve, Waldemar Ager, Augusta Abrahamsen, Mauritz SternerTurrmanns visor og andre vers, 1921Folkesuveræniteten og Grønlandsspørgsmaalet, 1922Vanlege sjukdomar, 1925Norsk verslæra, 1932Danmarks urett og Noregs rett til Grønland, 1932
  • Victor Hugo. Dei bannstøytte, translated by Idar Handagard, 1933Nye songar og nye salmor, 1938Rytme og rim: Stutt verslæra: Med ei rytmetavla, 1944