Viby and Salby – Viking villages

Typical small villages on Funen like Viby and Salby – 5.5km north of Kerteminde – are steeped in an idyllic country village atmosphere and it’s not hard to imagine that their history goes back to Viking times. Place name researchers have shown that settlements ending in "-by" got their names in the Viking Age. Viby could mean the village with the shrine – and Salby means the village with the hall, so there was probably a particularly large building here. In recent years, metal detector users have made many exciting discoveries of both bronze and gilded silver artefacts from fields around the existing villages, including bits from a rare harness saddle for horses. All this confirms that people have lived here continuously since Viking times.