Hakarps kyrka

The present building was funded largely by Nils Arvidsson Hägerflycht, a wealthy tax inspector who owned much of the parish, after crop failures left the congregation unable to pay for repairs to its ageing timber church. Built astonishingly quickly, with walls and roof completed within about eleven months, the new stone church was consecrated in December 1694. Hägerflycht and his family were later buried beneath the altar.

Dendrochronological analysis carried out during floor renovations in 2011–2012 revealed oak planks felled around 1141, suggesting the site had two earlier wooden churches: a stave church from the mid-1100s and a log-built church raised around 1283, which stood until the stone church replaced it. Some timber from these earlier buildings was reused in the roof of the current church, including carved and painted fragments now considered rare survivals; similar decorated timbers are known from only a handful of other Swedish churches.

Architecturally the church follows a Greek cross plan typical of Swedish Baroque church-building, with a wooden-framed tower and lantern rising over the crossing, and walls tinted a pale pink. Two large windows in each transept arm light the interior, and the flat wooden ceiling, higher over the crossing, helps give the space a sense of height. A sacristy fills the angle between the north and east arms.

Inside, a Romanesque triumphal crucifix and a sandstone font, both thought to date from the twelfth century, survive from the medieval predecessor churches, though it remains uncertain whether they originated at Hakarp itself or at the now-vanished Sanda church nearby. The altarpiece and pulpit, dated to 1636, were bought from Eksjö church and paid for by Hägerflycht. In 1729 the painter Edvard Orm decorated the ceilings with biblical scenes, including a much-discussed depiction of hell in the southern arm, said locally to be one of the most fearsome such paintings in Sweden.

Excavations during twentieth-century restoration work uncovered burial vaults, coins, fragments of books and other objects beneath the church floor, along with further timber from the earlier buildings. Some of this material, including painted beams, can still be seen inside the church or in local museum collections. The building's organ has been rebuilt and altered several times since an original five-stop instrument was installed in the 1690s, with the current mechanical organ dating from 1982.