Valdimar Tr. Hafstein

Valdimar Tr. Hafstein (born 12 October 1972) is an associate professor of folkloristics and ethnology at the University of Iceland. He received his MA in folklore in 1999 and his Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with Alan Dundes and John Lindow. He completed the BA degree in folkloristics and ethnology at the University of Iceland in 1995 under the guidance of professor Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson. He has been a visiting professor at Berkeley and the Georg-August Universität Göttingen, and a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at New York University. Valdimar chaired the Icelandic Commission for UNESCO from 2011-2012.

He helped found the open access journal Cultural Analysis in 2000 and served as its co-editor until 2007. He serves on the editorial board for Ethnologia Europaea as well as Cultural Analysis. He has published widely in English and Icelandic on topics ranging from heritage theory to copyright, from UNESCO to contemporary and medieval legends, and from traditional wrestling to CCTV surveillance. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Portuguese, Croatian, and Danish.

Valdimar Hafstein is the current president of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore.

Works

• "The Elves' Point of View : Cultural Identity in Contemporary Icelandic Elf-Tradition". In: Fabula v41 n1-2 (2000): 87-104.
• "Bodies of Knowledge. Ole Worm & Collecting in Late Renaissance Scandinavia". In: Ethnologia Europaea 33, no. 1, (2003): 5.
• "The Politics of Origins: Collective Creation Revisited". In: Journal of American Folklore v117 n465 (2004): 300-315.
• "Spectacular Reproduction". In: Journal of Medical Humanities v28 n1 (2007): 3-17.
• "Claiming Culture: Intangible Heritage Inc., Folklore ©, Traditional Knowledge™". In: Prädikat: "HERITAGE" : Wertschöpfungen aus kulturellen Ressourcen ed. by Dorothee Hemme, Markus Tauschek and Regina Bendix (LIT Verlag : Münster, 2007). ISBN 978-3-8258-9892-2. P. 75-100.
• "Intangible Heritage as a List : from Masterpieces to the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage". In: Intangible Heritage ed. by Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa (London : Routledge, 2009). ISBN 978-0-415-47396-5, P. 93-111.
• "Collectivity by Culture Squared: Cultural Heritage in Nordic Spaces". In: Arv. Nordic Yearbook of Folklore vol. 6 (2009): P. 11-24.
• With Regina Bendix. "Culture and Property. An Introduction". In: Ethnologia Europaea 39, no. 2, (2009): 5.
• With Martin Skrydstrup. "Europe at the Crossroads of Rights and Culture(s)". In: A companion to the anthropology of Europe ed. by Ullrich Kockel, Máiréad Nic Craith and Jonas Frykman (Chichester, West Sussex, UK ; Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). OCLC 754105650 ISBN 978-1-4051-9073-2, ISBN 1-4051-9073-6. P. 389-406.
• "Cultural Heritage". In: A Companion to Folklore ed. by Regina F. Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem (Chichester, West Sussex, UK ; Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). ISBN 1-4051-9499-5. P. 500-519.