Förlanda kyrka

A Romanesque stone church, thought to date from the twelfth or thirteenth century, once stood here, comprising a nave and a narrower, lower chancel ending in a semicircular apse with a flat ceiling. By the 1880s this medieval building was considered inadequate, and in 1885 the parish decided to demolish almost all of it, retaining only the tower - itself built in 1828 to replace an earlier bell frame - and a small section of the west wall.

The present church was built in 1885 to designs by the architect Adrian C. Peterson in a neoclassical style, incorporating the older tower, and was consecrated on 15 June 1887. Its whitewashed granite walls are notable for their tall proportions and large windows in cast-iron frames: five on the north side and four on the south. The building has three entrances, through the tower, the south porch and the sacristy. A restoration in 1992-1993 returned the exterior to something closer to its original appearance and saw the fittings conserved.

Among the church's most valuable possessions is a medieval font carved from soapstone, generally dated to around 1250-1280 and attributed to the so-called Starrkärr school of stonemasons. Its four-lobed bowl and shaft are unadorned but for simple roll mouldings, and a wooden canopy from the eighteenth century hangs above it.

The altarpiece, depicting the risen Christ with an angel, dates from the 1880s, though it incorporates older elements: a crucifix figure from the seventeenth century and carved woodwork at the sides believed to be eighteenth-century. An older altar painting of Christ on the cross, also eighteenth-century, hangs on the south wall of the chancel, while the pulpit, with four carved figures, dates from the same period and was restored in 1949 to reveal its original colours.

Painted biblical figures that once decorated the gallery front of the old church were transferred to the new building, being cut down to fit the available space; they were reassembled in their original order during the 1949 restoration, with missing sections newly created. The larger of the two bells is said to have been cast in 1691 for the earlier bell frame, while the smaller was cast in Ystad in 1925. The current organ, built in 1971, reuses some pipework from an 1886 instrument, whose case still forms the organ front today.