Söderbärke

Söderbärke stands on a narrow isthmus by Lake Barken in the ironworking country of Bergslagen. A stone church was built here in the fourteenth century, serving farms and settlements around the lake. Finnish settlers came into the surrounding forests in the seventeenth century as ironworking developed. In the early eighteenth century the church was enlarged, with substantial support from owners of the Larsbo and Malingsbo works, linking its rebuilding to the prosperity of the local iron industry.