Yngvar Heikel

Yngvar Sigurd Heikel (19 April 1889 – 1 September 1956) was a Finland-Swedish ethnologist.

Life and work
Heikel was born in Helsinki, Finland, in 1889 to gymnastics teacher Viktor Heikel. Among his family are aunt and uncle, Anna – an educator – and Felix Heikel – a banker – and grandfather Henrik Heikel, a priest.

He graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1915 and was a statistician at the Bank of Finland from 1921 to 1924 and from 1935. However, he is best known for his research on folk culture in Swedish-speaking Finland, especially on folk dances and folk costumes. Heikel sampled and categorized each village's form of folk costume. His work was also the main initiator of the founding of the Brage Costume Museum. He also charted the connection between living conditions and disease in different areas.

He was secretary of the, founded by musicologist Otto Andersson, from 1916 and director of its costume bureau and village costume museum from 1923. He participated in the founding of the Finland Swedish Folk Dance Association and was its president from 1946 to 1955. He contributed to the collection  (volume VI:B "Dansbeskrivningar", 1938) and his work På forskningsresor i svenskbygden was published in 1986 with an introduction and commentary by.

Heikel died in Helsinki in 1956.