Fågelsjö kapell

Fågelsjö's origins lie in the Forest Finn settlement of the 1600s, when Finnish incomers cleared land using slash-and-burn agriculture and supported themselves through farming, gunsmithing and trade. The village was originally part of Mora parish, later Sveg, before joining the newly created Los parish in 1856, itself formed in 1846 to serve the Finnish settlements straddling Hälsingland and Dalarna.

Before any permanent church existed, villagers gathered for prayer meetings in private farmhouses, since the parish church was far away. The introduction of Sweden's 1842 elementary school statute created a need for a schoolroom, and between 1862 and 1869 the villagers built a combined school and prayer house, timber-built on a stone foundation, which today serves as Fågelsjö kapell. It originally contained a chapel room, a schoolroom and quarters for the teacher, with a bell mounted in a wooden frame above the entrance.

The chapel's present character dates largely from a thorough 1931 renovation, carried out with support from the Diakonistyrelsen and led by Ejnar and Elis Lindström of Svärdsjö. This gave the building its brown-painted board panelling and small-paned antique glass windows in the chancel area; the interior decoration was designed by the artist Gustav Ankarcrona. Further repainting followed in the 1980s, when the sacristy walls were decorated in a style modelled on the nearby Fågelsjö Gammelgård open-air museum.

A freestanding bell tower, dated to 1953 according to one source, stands near the chapel, and a burial ground lies across the village road, its oldest section dating from 1832. A mortuary building stands to the north of the chapel, according to Wikipedia.

Among the chapel's furnishings, the altar textile is a notable piece: a woven hanging designed in 1933 by the textile artist Märta Måås-Fjetterström, depicting a biblical motif of lilies, set within a border of classicising pilasters.