Idar Handagard (August 9, 1874 – December 11, 1959) was a Norwegian physician, botanist, Nynorsk campaigner, temperance activist, and government scholar.

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.

[1] He never practiced as a physician, but was an active and persistent writer, and he wrote more than 50 books and pamphlets, including Doktorboki (1913) and Vanlege dykdouk (1925), became involved in the Greenland case,[2] and wrote several short biographies of poets in the series Småskrifter for bokvenner about Ivar Aasen, Kristofer Janson, Johan Herman Wessel, and Henrik Wergeland.

His motivation was based on Christian ethics, as well as public and medical grounds.