Ragnar Hvidsten (3 December 1926 – 21 September 2016) was a Norwegian

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby le ...

. He played as an

inside forward Forwards (also known as attackers) are outfield positions in an association football team who play the furthest up the pitch and are therefore most responsible for scoring goals as well as assisting them. As with any attacking player, the role ...

for

Sandefjord Sandefjord () is a city and the most populous municipality in Vestfold og Telemark county, Norway. The municipality of Sandefjord was established on 1 January 1838. The municipality of Sandar was merged into Sandefjord on 1 January 1969. On 1 ...

and

Skeid Skeid is a Norwegian alliance sports club from Nordre Åsen, Oslo. It has sections for association football (one for elite and one for grassroots football), Nordic skiing and bandy. General history The club was founded as ''IK Skeid'' on 5 De ...

Hovedserien Eliteserien () is a Norwegian professional league for association football clubs. At the top of the Norwegian football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. Contested by 16 clubs, it operates on a system of promotio ...

, and was capped 21 times for the Norwegian national team, scoring two goals.

Career

Hvidsten was born in Sandar and started his career for the local club Runar where he played 171 matches (a number which includes cup matches and friendlies). He joined

Sandefjord BK Sandefjord Ballklubb is a Norwegian football club from Sandefjord, currently playing in Norwegian Fourth Division, the fifth tier in the Norwegian football league system. The club was founded on 27 February 1917. Their home matches are played at ...

ahead of the 1949–50 season where he played 26 matches and scored three goals for the team in

before he joined

in the middle of the 1951–52 season. Hvidtsten scored eight goals in 20 matches for Skeid, before he returned to Sandefjord BK after one and a half season. Hvidsten played 69 matches and scored seven goals for Sandefjord BK until he retired in 1959. However, Hvidsten had a spell at the English amateur club

Hendon Hendon is an urban area in the Borough of Barnet, North-West London northwest of Charing Cross. Hendon was an ancient manor and parish in the county of Middlesex and a former borough, the Municipal Borough of Hendon; it has been part of Great ...

in 1955, and played for the team in the 1955

FA Amateur Cup The FA Amateur Cup was an English football competition for amateur clubs. It commenced in 1893 and ended in 1974 when the Football Association abolished official amateur status. History Following the legalisation of professionalism within footba ...

final, and became the first Norwegian to do so. Hvidsten later also played in the

Norwegian Football Cup The Norwegian Football Cup ( no, Norgesmesterskapet i fotball for herrer) is the main knockout cup competition in Norwegian football. It is run by the Football Association of Norway and has been contested since 1902, making it the oldest football ...

final, when Sandefjord BK was beaten 4–0 against

Fredrikstad Fredrikstad (; previously ''Frederiksstad''; literally "Fredrik's Town") is a city and municipality in Viken county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Fredrikstad. The city of Fredrikstad was founded in 15 ...

1957 1957 ( MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1957th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 957th year of the 2nd millennium, the 57th year of the 20th century, and the 8th y ...

International career

Hvidsten made his national team debut for

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

in a friendly match against

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...

on 5 November 1950. He scored his first goal for Norway against Ireland on 30 May 1951, which was his fourth international match. In July the same year against Iceland, Hvidsten scored his second and last international goal. Together with his teammate in Sandefjord BK, Thorbjørn Svenssen, Hvidsten was selected for the Norwegian squad who competed at the

1952 Summer Olympics The 1952 Summer Olympics ( fi, Kesäolympialaiset 1952; sv, Olympiska sommarspelen 1952), officially known as the Games of the XV Olympiad ( fi, XV olympiadin kisat; sv, Den XV olympiadens spel) and commonly known as Helsinki 1952 ( sv, Helsin ...

in Finland. He earned his last cap in a Nordic championship against Sweden in September 1955. In total, Hvidsten was capped 21 times for Norway, while FIFA only recognize 19 of those as full international matches. He died at the age of 89 on 21 September 2016.Death notice
''

Aftenposten ( in the masthead; ; Norwegian for "The Evening Post") is Norway's largest printed newspaper by circulation. It is based in Oslo. It sold 211,769 copies in 2015 (172,029 printed copies according to University of Bergen) and estimated 1.2 million ...

''. Retrieved 28 September 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hvidsten, Ragnar 1926 births 2016 deaths Sportspeople from Sandefjord Footballers from Vestfold Norwegian men's footballers Norway men's international footballers IL Runar footballers Sandefjord BK players Skeid Fotball players Hendon F.C. players Eliteserien players Norwegian expatriate men's footballers Expatriate men's footballers in England Norwegian expatriate sportspeople in England Olympic footballers for Norway Footballers at the 1952 Summer Olympics Men's association football inside forwards