A chronicle of floods foretold: Memory, maladaptation, and river governance in Holstebro, Denmark

This article traces the history of flood events in Holstebro, Denmark, over the past 150 years, revealing a persistent pattern of maladaptation, fragmented governance, and collective forgetting. Drawing on municipal archives and newspaper reporting, the article reconstructs 64 flood events and analyses their socio‑political and ecological implications. It argues that flood management in Holstebro has been hindered by a failure to acknowledge the Storå river as a socio‑natural system characterized by multiple, shifting ontologies. Rather than fostering resilience, successive interventions reinforced vulnerability by separating hydraulic, ecological, and social concerns, and by allowing flood experiences to fade from public memory. The article contributes to river history and disaster studies by showing how floods shape society not only through destruction, but through absence in memory, with implications for inland river towns facing recurrent flooding under climate change.