The Incomparable Dr. Helen Damico

Dr. Helen Damico died yesterday, 15 April 2020, of COVID-19. She is the first person I've known who has died. The last time I saw Dr. Helen Damico was 21 July 2017. Christine Kozikowski had come stateside to show Dr. Damico the front matter for New Readings on Women and Early Medieval English Literature and Culture: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Honour of Helen Damico (2019). Dr. Damico was clearly excited to see people, in a general way, but she also clearly did not know who a lot of us were at that point. It was not long after that her family moved her home, and into an Alzheimer's facility where she stayed until she died yesterday.

I first met Dr. Damico in August 2013 in my first semester of coursework for my PhD program at the University of New Mexico. I'm not sure why I, as a first gen, first semester, older PhD student with no grasp for languages signed up for Old Norse as part of my introduction to medieval studies, but I am so happy I did. I originally wanted to look at the folklore of Loki as a proto-devil in English literature and I spent a lot of that first year in her office talking about this and the class. I struggled with the grammar and language without any real past foundation for it, and she was kind and generous every time I sat across from her. She would patiently go over every question I had, and never lost patience with what I know were often ignorant grammar questions.

Dr. Damico was amazing in every way you can be. She was a firecracker. The knowledge her brain contained were immeasurable. She brooked no nonsense. When she was ready to move on with a topic, or more likely have you move on from a topic, she constantly would say "Okay, good, fine." She was tiny, a thing that turned into frailty those last years, dwarfed by the piles in her office which reflected decades of occupancy. At least once a semester she dug out her projector, like old school projector, and would show us slides from her visits to the places we were reading about. 

In class she was amazing to listen to. She easily taught larger classes of folks mostly buried by Old Norse grammar. Later when I took her Viking Women course, she could rattle off details and connections in mind-blowing ways, although in hindsight it is clear that by then she was already suffering from Alzheimers. She could conduct class, and discuss all the Viking Women in the texts we read, but seemed to have a hard time remembering things we'd talked about or conferences.

As someone who started her PhD program at 37 I loved that Dr. Damico had a whole career before earning her PhD from New York University in 1980 at the age of 49. While she may have gotten a late start, her impact on the field of medieval studies cannot be overstated. She introduced me to feminist readings of medieval literature, as well as female centered medieval texts. That first year I frequently ran into her in the copy room as she printed and copied book proofs for what would become Beowulf and the Grendel-kin: Politics and Poetry in Eleventh-Century England. At 82, as an emeritus, she was still working, seemingly non-stop. We can only hope to have that kind of career.


Her legacy is assured, at the University of New Mexico and beyond. The Institute of Medieval Studies which she founded continues, in non-pandemic times, to teach and inspire the next generation of scholars, bring visiting global scholars of Viking and medieval Norse studies to campus each year, sponsor student travel to conferences, and host the spring lecture series. Her academic work is foundational to the work many of us do. For many of us her legacy continues in us, with the kindness and encouragement she showed us.


One of the last times I saw her before that summer of 2017 she was in the several year process of clearing out her office, an almost comical tale of the department desperately needing the space and no one wanting to tell her she had to leave. She had copies of her first book Beowulf's Wealhtheow and the Valkyrie Tradition (1984) still shrink wrapped in her office, and when I stopped by to see her and visit, she gave me one and signed it.


All in all my contact and association with Dr. Damico was brief. It certainly pales in comparison with those who worked closely with her over decades. For me though she was a kind and fierce introduction to the field, and grief is personal and incomparable. I will always be grateful for the time I spent learning from her, and will miss her deeply.