Malungs kyrka

The oldest parts of the church are believed to date from the 1200s, and it is thought to have served as a resting place for pilgrims travelling along the Västerdalälven towards the shrine of St Olof at Nidaros. A local legend tells that an earlier church at Hallesbacken burned down, and that a cross cast into the river came to rest near the present site, marking it as chosen ground. An alternative explanation suggests the church community simply relocated as millstone quarrying drew people eastward, while a further theory holds that the site was already in use before Christianity arrived. These accounts do not agree, and none can be verified.

The building began as a simple two-bay nave without a tower. Between roughly 1490 and 1510 it was enlarged, and the star vaults visible in the ceiling today date from the 1400s. The tower, built of rough stone, is thought to have been added around the 1560s. Beneath later roofing, medieval roof timbers survive, with several distinct types of medieval trusses identified by researchers, some possibly reused from an even earlier structure.

Further major changes came in the 1700s, when the church gained its present cross-shaped plan with two transepts and tall hipped roofs, and the tower was likely heightened again. The 1800s brought further alteration: the tower's upper section and dome were rebuilt, windows enlarged, and the interior whitewashed. A large restoration in the 1880s removed much of the older fittings, some of which were later recovered and reinstated, including a wrought-iron candle stand from the 1600s now on the pulpit, and a font dated to the 1200s.　

Among the notable furnishings are a pulpit from 1686 and an altarpiece, variously dated to 1765 or 1782 in different accounts. Two early sixteenth-century wooden sculptures, John the Baptist and a Man of Sorrows figure, are attributed to the Hälsingland master Hakon Gulleson. A well-preserved sculpture of St Olof, the church's patron saint, is thought to have been carved in Lübeck around the late 1300s or early 1400s.

Restorations continued into the twentieth century: work in 1958–59 aimed to recover the building's older character, uncovering sixteenth-century wall paintings and adding new galleries in the transepts. Further conservation in the 1990s included cleaning and repositioning the medieval sculptures, replacing the altar rail with movable kneelers, and relaying the herringbone brick floor.