Hjordis Kamph, a Swedish warmblood ambassador, inspector and journalist, has passed away. She was 90 years old.
Kamph began working with the Swedish Warmblood Breeding Association (ASVH, now SWB) in the 1970s and was permanently employed as registrar in 1988. She dedicated her life to horses and horse breeding and was in many ways ahead of her time. She was one of the first women to judge young horses at inspections and licensings and spent many hours along the Autobahn visiting the German stallion licensings and gaining impressions from other countries.
Hjördis grew up in Hasslöv in southern Halland. Her parents ran a rectory farm, where Ardennes horses were used in the daily work. During the war, the farm was the communications center for a battalion from A3 in Kristianstad and the family had to stay in one of the bedrooms. When the soldiers rode home in the evening, little Hjördis got to sit on the saddle button in front of one of the officers.
At the age of thirteen, Hjördis got his first horse of his own, a castrated former flying stallion born in 1944 by Reval out of Vera 3321 by Vatel, bred by Nils G. Svensson. This horse was used, in addition to riding, also for working in the fields. Competing was out of the question, there were no equestrian associations in southern Halland at that time.
Hjördis married Calle and moved to Lund, where she made her first contact with ASVH through Knut Odh. In the mid-1970s, the Malmöhus County Half-Blood Club was formed and Hjördis became part of the education and travel committee that organized trips to Germany. Kamph became an inspector herself.
Kamph laid the foundation for the Swedish breeding indexes. She made the statistics on the competition results and Hjördis sat at home and, with the help of the Swedish Equestrian Federation's calendar, she checked the horses, their sires and the competition results. This work was later taken over by Jan's students at SLU and can be said to be the first step towards our breeding indexes.
Kamph slowly became more embedded in the ASVH, handling member mailings. She typed the first green registration certificates, handling horse registries and also scribed for judges. She attended stallion inspections, performance tests in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. She frequently went to the Bundeschampionate. She was honoured by the Holsteiner Verband.
In recent years, knitting has been a big part of Hjördis's activities, as has listening to opera. Hjördis celebrated her 90th birthday last autumn.
Read her detailed life story here.
Photo © Ridehesten