Hörður Barðdal
water polo player, swimmer, skier, golfer, and a disabled athlete activist (1946-2009)
Hörður Barðdal (22 May 1946 – 4 August 2009) was a competitive water polo player, competitive swimmer, competitive skier, competitive golfer, and a disabled athlete activist.
Early life
Hörður Barðdal was born on 22 May 1946 to Óli S. Barðdal; director of Seglagerðin; Ægir, and Sesselja Guðnadóttir Barðdal. Óli died in 1983.
At the age of nine, Barðdal contracted polio, which resulted in paralysis. Despite this, he remained active in both his professional and athletic pursuits. His involvement in sports and related activities has been noted in accounts of his career.
Athletic career
During the years 1965–1970, Barðdal played water polo with able athletes with Reykjavík F.C (KR) and won the Reykjavík and Icelandic Championships several times. He was also a coach at the Reykjavík F.C. for a while, where he trained both able and disabled people in swimming. He was one of the first competitive athletes in the Reykjavík's Sport Union for the Disabled (ÍFR) and he competed among other places at the Nordic Championships for the Disabled in 1976 and 1977 in swimming, where he won a bronze and silver medal. He was awarded the first Disabled Athlete of the Year in 1977, and he concluded his swimming career at the 1980 Summer Paralympics in Arnhem, Netherlands.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hörður Barðdal” as water polo player, swimmer, skier, golfer, and a disabled athlete activist (1946-2009). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as water polo player, swimmer, skier, golfer, and a disabled athlete activist (1946-2009). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5964720. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 2009, 1983 and 1965.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hörður Barðdal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.