Arby kyrka

The earliest church on this site was probably a simple timber building put up in the early 1100s. During the 1200s it was gradually replaced by a Romanesque stone church: first the chancel that survives today, then a new rectangular nave, and finally a west tower. A drawing from 1747 shows the tower still crowned with two spires, but these were removed in the early 1770s, when the tower chamber was absorbed into the nave and the church was extended to give the growing congregation more room. Further remodelling followed in the 1820s, and archaeological investigations accompanied a restoration in 1971–72.

The church's three bells are believed to date from the medieval period; because their weight in the tower had caused structural problems, a freestanding bell frame was built nearby as early as the seventeenth century, and the bells still hang there today, in an open belfry with a small spire. The largest bell, cast in 1403, is said by its inscription to be dedicated to Olof, Mary and Christ, and is thought to be the oldest bell still in regular use in the Swedish countryside.

Inside, a barrel vault covers the nave, and the chancel is separated by a triumphal arch leading to a built-in apse where the altar stands; two consecration crosses can be seen on the apse walls. Fittings from different eras survive side by side, including a font from the late 1200s, a crucifix attributed to a South Scandinavian workshop from the second half of the same century, a rococo pulpit reached from the sacristy, and an eighteenth-century altarpiece. A Pietà, probably made in Bavaria around 1600, was later donated to the church by the artist Ebba Pauli Rappe.

A notable find came to light in 1973, when a fragment of a Christian rune stone from the second half of the eleventh century was discovered during pipe-laying works in the gravel path outside the chancel. Known as the Bove stone, its surviving inscription is read as a memorial to someone named Bove; it had reportedly been recorded on the churchyard in 1743 before disappearing for over two centuries. Fragments of a medieval reliquary casket associated with the church, along with a covering stone once sealing a relic cavity in the medieval altar, are also linked to the site, the latter now built into the present altar. In the churchyard stands a medieval stone tithe barn, a rare survival from the church's earliest history.