Tryde kyrka

An earlier medieval church stood on the site from around 1160, only a few decades after Lund Cathedral was completed. It was said to have been one of the most richly decorated rural churches in Skåne, but it was demolished in the late 1860s to make way for the current building. Surviving fittings from the old church, including sword fragments, a censer, textile and carved stonework, are now held at the Historical Museum in Lund.

The present church was completed in 1868. Sources differ on the architect: one account names F. W. Scolander, while Wikipedia credits Edvard von Rothstein, adding that the local landowner and patron, the merchant Johan Petter Hintze of Kristianstad, financed and personally oversaw the six-month construction. The church was consecrated on 29 November 1868 by Bishop Flensburg.

The church's most celebrated treasure is its 12th-century sandstone font, carved by the so-called Master of Majestatis, also known as the Tryde Master, and regarded as one of Sweden's finest Romanesque works of art. It represented Sweden at the 1867 Paris World's Fair, where it won a bronze medal; a copy of the medal is displayed on the pillar beside the font today. The bowl is carved with figures in relief thought to depict the legend of Saint Fridolin, involving a disputed inheritance, a court case and a dead man called as witness. A brass christening dish from the 16th century, given to the church in the mid-1600s to mark a child's birth, is kept nearby, along with two stones once used to heat the baptismal water.

The original 12th-century Tryde crucifix, now held at the Historical Museum in Stockholm, is considered one of Sweden's oldest wooden sculptures, carved in willow with a gilded brass crown; the original cross itself has been lost. A copy carved in lime wood by the artist Thure Törn of Malmö was installed on the church's north wall and received in a service on All Saints' Day, 1991. Scholars have long debated whether the crucifix is a local Scanian work, perhaps copying lost originals in Dalby or Lund, or an import from Westphalia or the Rhineland; its original colouring survives only beneath later overpainting.

The altarpiece and pulpit both date from the 1600s, with the pulpit sometimes dated more precisely to 1618; carved apostle figures from the old church's gallery front were also retained, one now incorporated into the altarpiece. The current organ, built in 1977 by Olof Hammarberg of Gothenburg, reuses the case front of an earlier 1890 instrument by Carl Elfström of Ljungby.