Hyssna gamla kyrka

The oldest parts of the building date back to the 1100s, though its present appearance owes much to eighteenth-century alterations. In 1728 a semicircular chancel was added, the nave was lengthened, and a distinctive musicians' gallery was built, from which fiddlers once played marches as bridal couples entered the church - a custom that was banned in the 1840s.

By 1910, three years after a new parish church was consecrated nearby, the old church fell out of regular use and began to deteriorate. A restoration in 1922-1923, following proposals by the architect Sven Brandel, deliberately preserved the appearance the building had around 1910 when it was abandoned. Because the church has stood unused for long periods, its interior was never substantially modernised, and it retains an unusually ancient character. Today it is used only occasionally, for weddings and christenings.

Among its notable furnishings is a font dating from the mid-to-late 1200s, carved in three parts from sandstone and limestone; scholars believe the limestone base may have been made on Gotland while the sandstone bowl, decorated with figures and foliage, was probably carved locally, possibly by a less skilled hand imitating a similar font at Hajom. A painted image of Christ above the altar is thought to date from the 1100s, and there are also carved figures of an enthroned Madonna and Child and a Christ with a cross, both believed to date from around 1250. A depiction of Mary on the north wall was made in Lübeck in 1515.

The pulpit, carved in 1706, and the altarpiece of 1710 are both attributed to the sculptor Gustav Kihlman of Borås. The barrel-vaulted ceiling carries decorative paintings begun in 1696 by the artist Anders Falck, later overpainted following the rebuilding of the chancel in 1732 by Sven Wernberg. How much of Falck's original work survives beneath is debated; some figures on the gallery front and pulpit show stylistic similarities to Falck's paintings elsewhere, suggesting his hand may still be partly visible, while other sections are thought to be the work of a local painter.

The church's small organ was built in 1872 by Hans Josefsson, a schoolteacher and organist from Hajom, and was later restored and retuned in the twentieth century.