Stöde kyrka

A small grey stone church stood on this site from the 1200s, with a chancel narrower than the nave. By the late 1600s the building had fallen into disrepair, with the north wall and chancel showing signs of collapse; repairs were carried out in 1694 and 1699. As the congregation needed a larger building, the old church was demolished in 1757, along with much of the churchyard wall. Between 1757 and 1759 an elongated octagonal brick church was built in its place, reputedly completed within eight weeks under master builder Olof Romberg, who also drew up the designs.

The building has been altered since. Between 1819 and 1824 the vaulted ceiling was removed and replaced with a wooden barrel vault. In 1881 a seventeenth-century timber bell tower was demolished and replaced with a tower to the east, its ground floor converted into a new sacristy. The same works gave the church its rounded window arches, with two further windows added to each side of the nave.

Several striking older objects survive from the medieval church. The font, carved from Gotland limestone with relief sculpture, dates from around 1200, and a triumphal crucifix is attributed to the 1300s. A wrought-iron chandelier is also said to date from the fourteenth century. On the north wall hang two early sixteenth-century wooden sculptures, attributed to the workshop of Haaken Gulleson, while the south wall carries carvings said to depict Saint Olof and Saint Michael.

The rococo altarpiece was made in 1763 by Johan Edler the Elder, with an altar painting by Carl Hofverberg completed the same year. The pulpit arrived in Stöde in 1759, having previously stood in a church in Sundsvall; it is richly carved and attributed to the joiner Nils Nilsson.

The church has had a succession of organs: an 1852 instrument by Johan Gustaf Ek was replaced in 1936 by a larger organ from E A Setterquist & Son, and the present organ, built in 1958 by Gerhard Schmid of Kaufbeuren, Germany, reuses the 1852 case front behind its modern pipework.