Ryssby kyrka

The present church was built between 1840 and 1844 to designs by Axel Nyström, in the restrained Neoclassical manner sometimes called Tegnér style, and was consecrated in 1846 by Bishop Christopher Isac Heurlin. Local parishioners carried out the construction under master builder P. Pettersson. The new building replaced a medieval church, extended in the 1770s, which had stood a little further to the south-east.

The church consists of a rectangular nave with a semicircular chancel to the south, a sacristy against the eastern wall, and a tower to the north topped with a four-sided lantern and spire cross. Inside, the barrel-vaulted hall creates a light, spacious interior typical of the period. The most striking feature is a large painting of 1951 by Waldemar Lorentzon, a member of the Halmstad Group of artists, depicting the whole span of salvation history from Creation to the end of time.

Among the church's furnishings is a triumphal crucifix dating from the second half of the 13th century, its maker unrecorded. The altarpiece behind the cross and shroud is of unknown origin, flanked by carved figures representing faith and hope, thought to be the work of the sculptor Per Magn and originally added to the earlier medieval church in 1779. The font, carved from sandstone in the early 13th century, belongs to the so-called Vitaby group of fonts most commonly found in the Österlen district of Skåne.

The pulpit was acquired in 1704 for the earlier church and later modernised in 1844 when installed in the new building. In 1964 a runestone, known as the Ryssby stone, was removed from the church wall and re-erected in the churchyard, where it can still be seen today.

The church has had a succession of organs, from an instrument recorded before 1773 through 18th and 19th-century rebuildings to the present organ, built in 1967 by A. Magnussons Orgelbyggeri with a disposition drawn up by Ture Olsson, cathedral organist in Växjö.