Forserums kyrka

According to tradition recorded by the parish and repeated on Swedish Wikipedia, the church's origins lie with Cistercian monks from nearby Nydala Abbey in the late 1100s, making it a very old foundation, though few original medieval features survive unaltered above ground.

The building has been reshaped over the centuries. In 1781 it was extended eastwards with a semicircular chancel, commemorated by King Gustav III's gilded emblem placed above the door on the outside of the chancel. In the early twentieth century a lightning strike damaged the freestanding bell tower; rather than repair it, the parish demolished the stapel and built a tower onto the church itself. A further restoration in 1935 altered the tower again, removing sheet metal cladding, straightening its curved lines, and replacing the covering with the ancient-style wooden shingle roof that now covers the whole church. Interior changes at the same time included the puzzling relocation of the pulpit from the north to the south side, and the removal of a window beside it.

Among the church's furnishings is a large wooden crucifix from the fourteenth century, hanging from a beam in the centre of the nave, with a Christ figure close to life size and the traditional INRI inscription above the head. A stone cross bearing the image of a Thor's hammer, found in the churchyard during the 1930s, is described as the church's oldest surviving object, suggesting the site may have had significance before the medieval church was built. A sandstone font dates from the 1200s, and the pulpit itself is from the later 1600s, despite its unusual position. Along the gallery rail is a series of paintings of unknown origin and age, adding a further note of mystery to the interior.

The church has had at least two organs of note: an 1856 mechanical instrument by Sven Nordström of Flisby, parts of whose façade pipes are still sounding, and a later two-manual instrument built in 1949 by Åkerman & Lund, which was sold on in 1976.