Björke kyrka

The church grew in stages. The oldest surviving section is the western part of the chancel, dating from the early 1200s and featuring a Romanesque portal. The nave was added around the mid-1200s, its west wall containing a now-blocked tower arch marking a tower that was planned but never built. In the mid-1300s an earlier apse was demolished and the chancel extended to double its length, giving the building its present near-cubic nave and elongated chancel form.

The limewashed limestone exterior, with its low tiled roofs, owes much of its current appearance to work carried out in 1860, when the roof of the nave was lowered, windows enlarged, and a small timber-clad ridge turret added. This turret, along with the sacristy built the same year, was designed by Fredrik Wilhelm Scholander in a style unusual for Gotland, blending medieval and classicising details.

Inside, the nave and chancel are vaulted, the nave's four vaults gathered around a central column. A substantial restoration between 1910 and 1912 gave the church much of its present atmosphere, including windows remodelled to a medieval-inspired form. The east window's stained glass, created by Carl Wilhelm Pettersson in 1910, dates from this period, as does the altarpiece, a medieval-style retable made by Eugén Hammarberg to Pettersson's design and completed in 1911.

Among the church's older furnishings is one of Gotland's oldest pulpits, made in 1594, with its sounding board and stairs added later in 1745. The limestone font dates from the first half of the 1200s. Two triumphal crucifixes survive from different periods: one from the early 1200s and another from the mid-1300s, offering visitors a rare chance to compare devotional carving styles across more than a century. A carved wooden sacrament cabinet from the 1300s is set into the north wall of the chancel.

The church's organ, built in 1909 by Eskil Lundén of Gothenburg, replaced an earlier instrument from 1864. Its Neo-Gothic case was designed by Ivar Tengbom and Elis Kjellin, and the pneumatic instrument remains a notable feature of the interior for visitors with an interest in organs.