He received his Master of Arts in folklore in 1999 and his Doctor of Philosophy in 2004 from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with Alan Dundes and John Lindow. He completed the Bachelor 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 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 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 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 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.
