Köla kyrka

The present stone church was begun in 1699 and consecrated in 1702, built as a long church with a three-sided chancel, a sacristy attached to the north side, and originally a timber porch to the west. That porch was replaced in 1784 by the tower that stands today. The building's plan and exterior are typical of early 18th-century Swedish church architecture and have changed only marginally since, with whitewashed walls, inside and out, pierced by round-arched windows.

A reparation in 1813 raised the walls by three log courses and added a slate roof, with the tower receiving matching slate cladding in 1828. The most significant intervention came in the 1930s, when architect Bror Almquist led a restoration aimed at recovering the interior's 18th-century character, which had been altered during the 19th century. Workers uncovered the original polychrome colouring on the altarpiece and pulpit, both provincial Baroque pieces from the early 1700s: the altarpiece made in 1703–1705 by the sculptor Nils Falk, and the pulpit carved in 1723 by Olof Bruse.

During the same restoration, two burial chambers were discovered beneath the chancel, containing 21 coffins, mostly dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, a striking reminder of the site's long use as a place of burial as well as worship.

The font is older still: carved from soapstone with decorative plaited borders around the bowl, it dates from the 13th century, evidence that a church already stood at Köla long before the present building was raised. The chancel windows received stained glass designed by the artist Anders Byberg in 1934.

The church's organ has its own layered history: an instrument by E. A. Zetterquist & Son of Örebro was installed in 1897, and in 1963 Olof Hammarberg built a new mechanical organ retaining the earlier instrument's facade.