Vilske-Kleva kyrka

A wooden church is thought to have stood on this site in the 1000s, before it was replaced by the present Romanesque stone church during the 1100s. The original building had a nave with a narrower apse and chancel to the east, linked by a triumphal arch; the nave was extended westward already in medieval times, and a sacristy was later added to the north side of the chancel.

The church's interior is notable for its layered wall paintings. The earliest, simple black lines and strokes, date from around 1300, while a second, more elaborate set of paintings was added in the late 1400s or around 1500, attributed to the workshop of Master Amund. Among the surviving images near the triumphal arch is a painting believed to depict Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the Cistercian order and patron saint of beekeepers; three bishop's mitres in the scene are said to represent his three refusals of a bishopric.

The church took on much of its present external form in 1774, when the medieval bell tower was replaced by the current tower, incorporating the older medieval bell as its main bell. Around the same time the windows were likely enlarged. Structural concerns led to the removal of the nave's medieval vaulted ceiling in 1824, though the vault above the chancel was retained; a new timber ceiling was built in 1915–1916. A large north doorway with a carved sandstone portal was replaced by a window in 1833, though fragments of the portal survive built into the churchyard wall. In 1964 a medieval iron-clad door, with a dragon-shaped door ring, was moved to the south entrance.

Fittings of interest include a plain, undecorated medieval limestone font with its brass basin, and a gilded pulpit built between 1690 and 1692 by Nils Persson of Sjögerås. The oldest altarpiece, a Crucifixion scene donated in 1692, now hangs above the pulpit, while a later oil painting of Christ in Gethsemane from 1899 was moved to the nave wall when an altar cabinet by the artist Simon Sörman was installed in 1942. In the porch stands a finely carved medieval 'lily stone' grave slab.

Near the triumphal arch, a striking memorial commemorates the seventeenth-century vicar Jon Eswaeus (1616–1682) and his wives; according to the inscription, one of his wives is said to have given birth to twenty-nine children, a claim visitors may find as remarkable as the church's own long and layered history.