Vitomir Belaj

Vitomir Belaj (born November 8, 1937, in Maribor, Slovenia) is a Croatian ethnologist. In 1979 he received his PhD at Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. There was a professor since 1985, and since 2009 as emeritus professor. In his career, Belaj particularly studied ethnological history and mythological background of Slavs and Croats.

Selected works

 * Utemeljitelj hrvatske etnologije dr. Antun Radić (1966) (master's thesis)
 * Kultni vrtići u Jugoslaviji i njihov etnološki okvir (1979) (doctoral dissertation)
 * Die Kunde vom kroatischen Volk. Eine Kulturgeschichte der kroatischen Volkskunde (1998) ISBN 3928624571
 * Hod kroz godinu. Mitska pozadina hrvatskih narodnih običaja i vjerovanja (1998, 2007) ISBN 9789532123340
 * Sveti trokuti. Topografija hrvatske mitologije (with Juraj Belaj; 2014) ISBN 978-953-6927-74-6

Awards

 * 1998: Croatian State Award in Science (hr:Državna nagrada za znanost)
 * 2006: Milovan Gavazzi Award for lifetime achievement, Croatian Ethnographic Society