Einar Ólafur was born in Mýrdalur, where his father, Sveinn Ólafsson, was a farmer and smith.
[4] He became a student at the University of Copenhagen in 1918, but earned his master's degree only in 1928, after a severe bout of tuberculosis, with a thesis on trolls in the folklore of Iceland and Norway.
[3][7] He also had several outside duties; for example, he was on the governing board of the Icelandic Literary Society from 1952, edited its magazine, Skírnir, from 1944 to 1953, and was its president from 1962 to 1967.
He also continued to work on folklore, his first publication being a German-language index of Icelandic folk tales, followed by Um íslenzkar þjóðsögur (1940), and edited two collections of popular literature.
Of his last project, a survey of medieval Icelandic literature, Íslenzkar bókmenntir í fornöld, only volume 1, on Eddic poetry, was published, in 1962.