Orsa kyrka

The earliest stone church here was built in the 1200s, probably replacing a wooden stave church. Around 1300 the building was extended eastwards, likely when the sacristy was added, and timber fragments found during later work may date from this period. By the mid-1300s the church had been widened to its present breadth, and by the late 1400s it had reached its current size, apart from the chancel.

A tower foundation was laid on the west side in 1607, though the tower itself was not completed until 1639; that structure was later demolished because of poor construction, and the present tower was built in 1853 to designs by the architect Ludvig Hawerman. The five-sided chancel dates from a rebuilding of 1752–1755 overseen by master builder Petter Schulzberg of Västerås. Traces of the original thirteenth-century church survive in the north-west corner. A major restoration in 1979 renewed the roof, laid a new limestone floor at the front (with the rest in local Orsa sandstone), and uncovered remains of two earlier floors beneath, one of stone and one of brick.

Among the church's furnishings is a triumphal crucifix of North German origin, dated to the later 1300s. The font, cast in 1531, has a base decorated with carved dragon and horse heads. A sixteenth-century parish chest with iron fittings and three locks, its ring shaped like a dragon's head, also survives, along with a seventeenth-century bridal chair and other furniture kept in the sacristy.

The church bells tell their own story: one in the porch, cast in 1531 in the same year as the font, is said to have replaced an earlier bell confiscated by King Gustav Vasa, while three bells in the tower were cast in 1900 using metal recast from older medieval bells. The altarpiece, an oil painting of the Ascension acquired in 1755, replaced two medieval altar cabinets, which were given at the time to the chapel that preceded Skattunge church.

The church organ, on the west gallery, was built by Åkerman & Lund in 1942 but incorporates pipework from earlier instruments of 1878 and 1916; its façade also dates from 1916, extended at the sides in 1942. Records suggest an earlier organ had already fallen out of use by the 1600s. A smaller choir organ, made by the Danish firm Frederiksborg Orgelbyggeri, was installed during the 1979 restoration.