Åke Ohlmarks failed to receive a readership degree because his doctoral thesis titled Heimdalls Horn und Odins Auge lacked philological accuracy. The committee found the work insufficient and rejected it, preventing him from teaching independently in Sweden again.
Åke Ohlmarks took a position as lecturer at the University of Greifswald in 1941. He founded an institute for religious studies there alongside a member of the Deutsche Christen movement which aligned itself with National Socialist ideology until the Red Army invaded the city in 1945.
The thick volume titled Studien zum Problem des Schamanismus appeared on shelves in Lund during 1939. This work remains his most notable contribution to comparative religion despite later controversies surrounding his scholarship.
J.R.R. Tolkien read the Swedish translation Sagan om ringen in 1957 and found the version deeply flawed due to invented expressions and shortened portions. The author complained directly to Rayner Unwin in letter number 263 about these errors before compiling a Guide to the Names to correct them.
Åke Ohlmarks released a book titled Tolkien och den svarta magin in 1982 that expounded a conspiracy theory linking J.R.R. Tolkien and his fandom to Nazi occultism. This publication marked a shift from scholarly inquiry to personal hostility toward the community he once embraced.