Born in Norrköping in southern Sweden, his initial studies included folkloristics, religion, and economics in Lund, working in archives as a student and collecting folk tales.

For almost the entirety of his career, he was a teacher, later headmaster, of the folk high school (a form of tertiary popular education) in Vindeln.

In the latter part of his life, he held several exhibitions as an artist, and published a magazine generally concerning Vindeln and its surrounding localities.

In the 1920s, while studying at Lund, he worked for several years as an assistant to folklorist Carl Wilhelm von Sydow at Kulturen – they were the first staff at the institution.

Several articles, including an interview with von Sydow, were written by him; he also contributed original poetry and criticism of literature and art.

[2] Along with von Sydow at the Lund folkminnesarkivet and several other folklore researchers across Sweden, Segerståhl was a proponent for the introduction of international auxiliary languages.