  To obtain an understanding of the structure and reactions of nuclear systems
from first principles has been a long-standing goal of nuclear physics. In this
respect, few- and many-body systems provide a unique laboratory for studying
nuclear interactions. During the past decades, the development of accurate
representations of the nuclear force has undergone substantial progress.
Particular emphasis has been devoted to chiral effective field theory (EFT), a
low-energy effective representation of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Within
chiral EFT, many studies have been carried out dealing with the construction of
both the nucleon-nucleon ($N\!N$) and three-nucleon ($3N$) interactions. The
aim of the present article is to give a detailed overview of the chiral
interaction models that are local in configuration space, and show recent
results for nuclear systems obtained by employing these local chiral forces.
