West Ham United's pre-season trip to Denmark has been warmly welcomed by members of the Scandinavian Hammers supporters club.

Many of the group's 800 members, drawn from across Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, will descend on the 38,065-capacity Parken Stadium for West Ham's meeting with FC Copenhagen on Wednesday 20 July.

Among them will be Tore Søyland, who is flying in from the Norwegian capital Oslo to watch his heroes take on the Superliga champions.

Søyland spoke to whufc.com about the excitement running through the Scandinavian Hammers ahead of West Ham's visit.

Tore, what was your reaction when you heard West Ham would be coming to Copenhagen?

'Perfect' was my first reaction! I logged on to the web straight away just to make sure I got my flight tickets from Oslo.

I travel to a lot of West Ham matches in the UK each season, but I could not miss the opportunity to see the Hammers play in Copenhagen.

Just minutes later I read on our forum at westhamunited.no that many Scandinavian Hammers had already booked their trip to the Danish capital.

The Hammers have visited Sweden, Finland and Denmark in recent years for both pre-season and UEFA Intertoto Cup matches, so have you and your fellow Scandinavian Hammers watched West Ham play in Scandinavia before?

Just a few years ago West Ham went to Sweden for their pre-season tour and many members of the Scandinavian Hammers supporters club rescheduled their summer vacation so they could visit southern Sweden to see the West Ham training sessions and matches.

West Ham used to visit Scandinavia more often some years ago and I still hear stories about when Julian Dicks and company tried fishing in the northern part of Norway in the early 90s.

They also had a trip to Finland in 1999 when they played FC Jokerit in the Intertoto Cup.

How do you see the match going? Do you think West Ham can beat the champions of Denmark?

FC Copenhagen is a very good team and it will not be easy to beat the best team in Scandinavia. For many, many years Rosenborg of Norway was the leading club in Scandinavia but, in the last few seasons, FC Copenhagen has definitely taken that position.

FC Copenhagen did very well in the UEFA Champions League last season were they finally went out of the competition against Chelsea in the round of 16. The club has recently - like West Ham - appointed a new manager in Roland Nilsson.

Nilsson is best known to you Englishmen as a player for Sheffield Wednesday and Coventry City in the 90s. He has succeeded the Norwegian Ståle Solbakken, who recently took the manager job in 1.FC Cologne in the German Bundesliga.

FC Copenhagen are preparing for the UEFA Champions League qualifying ties this summer and it will certainly not be an easy game to win for West Ham.

How many members of the Scandinavian Hammers will be at Parken stadium?

I don't have the exact number but probably more than 100 members will come to the match. The Scandinavian Hammers has a total of nearly 800 members and I hope as many as possible will make the trip to Copenhagen for the game.

The Parken Stadium is a nice football ground with a capacity of around 40,000. FC Copenhagen is a club with many supporters and I think it will be a great atmosphere at the game.

I know some Danish people who support both West Ham and FC Copenhagen and, for them, it's going to be tough to decide who to support!

Are the Scandinavian Hammers optimistic about the club's future now Sam Allardyce is the new manager?

The most optimistic members think his reputation and record suit West Ham perfectly and think he is the right man to take the club straight back up in his first season, but there are also some people who are not convinced he is the right man for the job.

Allardyce has a reputation for playing 'route-one' football from his Bolton days and many Scandinavian Hammers are concerned he will not play football the 'West Ham way' - the way of playing attractive football is for many of us Scandinavian Hammers the main reason we became West Ham supporters in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

We will see what happens!