According to the story, Fru Botilda was travelling to the julotta (Christmas morning service) at Lurö kloster when bad weather left her party snowed in partway there. She is said to have had a church built near her home instead, which took her name. A Madonna figure set into the wall above the west door has long been popularly identified with Fru Botilda herself, though this is folklore rather than established history.
The church's western parts date from the late 1100s, and substantial stretches of this older stone walling survive within the present nave. The building was significantly reshaped in the late 17th and early 18th centuries: a three-sided chancel was added in the second half of the 1600s, and a south transept followed around 1700. The church has no tower.
A notable early feature is a carved tympanum stone that once adorned the south portal, attributed to the so-called Forshem Master; it is now kept at the Swedish History Museum rather than in the church itself. The font, decorated with figurative carving, also dates from the 12th century, making it one of the building's oldest surviving furnishings.
Most of the interior fittings reflect the 18th-century remodelling. The altarpiece and pulpit are both attributed to Isac Schullström, the altarpiece from the 1730s (sources differ slightly, giving either around 1730 or 1736) and the pulpit dated 1775. The wooden barrel vault ceiling was painted in 1769 by Hans Georg Schüffner. A pneumatic organ was built in 1921 by Anders Petter Loocrantz of Alingsås.
The surrounding landscape is considered archaeologically significant, with remains suggesting continuous settlement and land use in the area stretching back to around the time of Christ, linking the church to a much older pattern of habitation on Värmlandsnäs.