Gillesnuole kapell

The chapel's history is unusually eventful for such a modest building. A simple log structure with a rectangular plan, altar against the east wall and entrance opposite in the west gable, it originated in the late 1700s, when a new chapel and priest's chamber were built to replace an earlier, ramshackle predecessor once likened to a hayloft and a pigsty. Services here dated back further still, with priests from Sorsele travelling to the site each summer from at least the 1760s.

As reindeer-herding Sámi families gradually shifted their summer grazing further west towards the Norwegian border, Jillesnåle became less convenient as a church site, and a new chapel was built at Ammarnäs in 1858. Within a few years the Sámi congregation had moved their gathering there entirely, and Jillesnåle's church building was sold at auction in 1867. For seventy years it served a working life as a barn on a farm at Granåker, before being dismantled and rebuilt on its original site in 1937, reopening as a consecrated chapel in 1940. During this reconstruction a new floor of old timber was laid and new windows fitted in the style of one surviving original window, though the carved door itself is original. The altar furnishings, decorated with carving similar to that on the door, were modelled on those of Ammarnäs church.

The chapel is sometimes described as Sorsele's oldest church site, though this claim has been disputed: one early commentator argued no chapel existed at Jillesnåle before 1750, and later research suggests that a similarly named place mentioned in 17th-century records may actually refer to a different location altogether, with no certainty a church was ever built there.

Archaeological finds around the site, including worked quartz and quartzite tools and arrowheads, point to prehistoric settlement here, part of a wider pattern of activity along the banks of the Vindelälven river.

Since the chapel's return to its original site, several older buildings have been relocated around it, including a farmhouse, a cottage, a storehouse and a raised storage hut (njalla), along with two turf huts, giving the setting something of the character of a church town, although a government inquiry in 2003 concluded the surrounding buildings were too recent to count as a preserved historic church settlement. A bell cast in 1940 and a small harmonium are among the chapel's furnishings, and the chapel site is recognised as a national heritage interest for cultural conservation.