Eeppi Ursin’s “New Yorkista Puumalaan” Turns Longing, Migration and Finnish Memory Into Song

The single is the first taste of Ursin’s forthcoming album, ** My Finnish Soul Vol. 2, ** set for release on May 15, 2026. The album continues the deeply personal Finnish nostalgia project she began with My Finnish Soul in 2023, while expanding it with more original material and a broader reflection on Finnish identity abroad.

Ursin, a New York–based platinum-selling and award-winning artist originally from Finland, is known for a wide-ranging career that spans pop, jazz, soul, a cappella, children’s music, theater and modern opera. Her official biography describes her as a singer-songwriter, jazz vocalist, composer, arranger and pianist whose performances move between warmth, humor, virtuosity and emotional directness.

With “New Yorkista Puumalaan,” that range becomes intimate. The song is not only about geography. It is about the emotional distance between overstimulation and stillness, ambition and belonging, city heat and lake water, skyscrapers and pine trees.

From New York’s Pulse to Puumala’s Silence

In a recent Finnish-language post, Ursin asked listeners whether they had already heard her new song. She explained that she has spent every summer in Puumala since she was one year old. The place, she wrote, is deeply beloved to her: a landscape where she experienced formative moments, made art, wrote, performed, drew, searched for identity and built a relationship with nature whose meaning only became clearer later in life.

Her mother’s family roots also run strongly through Puumala. Ursin calls it “my soul home.”

That personal history gives the song its emotional weight. Sung in Finnish, “New Yorkista Puumalaan” translates as “From New York to Puumala.” Its lyrics begin in the suffocating summer heat of the city — the air standing still, the brain melting, the metropolis becoming “too much.” But gradually, the song turns toward escape and return. The Empire State Building, subway tunnels and the many-colored languages of New York give way to the Savonian dialect, Lake Saimaa, the Saimaa ringed seal, midnight sun, forests and the intoxicating presence of Finnish lakes.

Rather than treating Finland as a simple postcard image, Ursin writes about it as a place of survival. Nature is not decorative in the song. It is spiritual infrastructure. The narrator does not merely visit Puumala; she returns to her roots, to the trees, to the water, to something almost sacred.

A Single That Reflects the Immigrant Experience

The emotional architecture of “New Yorkista Puumalaan” becomes even richer in light of Ursin’s conversation on the True North podcast by Nordic Artists of New York. In the episode, Ursin speaks about moving to New York, her Finnishness, and the upcoming My Finnish Soul Vol. 2. The podcast notes that the album arrives May 15, 2026, with “New Yorkista Puumalaan” released as the lead single on April 24.

In the conversation, Ursin describes how leaving Finland made her feel more Finnish. That paradox is familiar to many immigrants: distance sharpens identity. Away from home, language, landscape, childhood memories and inherited customs often become more vivid, not less.

Ursin moved to New York in February 2020, just weeks before the pandemic transformed the city. During lockdown, she returned to Finland and spent time at her cabin in Puumala, where she began doing weekly livestream concerts called Love Boat. Those online performances built a devoted audience, particularly among Finnish and Finnish-American listeners hungry for connection, nostalgia and music that felt like home.

That pandemic-era ritual became central to the first My Finnish Soul album. Released in 2023, the album consisted of well-known Finnish songs reimagined as stripped-down voice-and-piano interpretations, many chosen from Love Boat audience requests.

The Legacy of My Finnish Soul

The first My Finnish Soul album was more than a collection of covers. It was a cultural bridge. BroadwayWorld described it as bringing Finnish folk and rock classics to life with soul and jazz tones, including songs such as “Säkkijärven Polkka,” “Myrskyn jälkeen,” “Pohjois-Karjala” and “Moottoritie on kuuma.” The album was also tied to Ursin’s 2022 selection as Finlandia Foundation National Performer of the Year, a role that took her on a 17-concert U.S. tour.

Finlandia Foundation National notes that Ursin traveled across the United States as its 2022 Performer of the Year, making appearances from Maine to Alaska. The organization also highlights her bilingual work in English and Finnish, her piano-accompanied performances, and her versatility across solo work, a cappella ensembles and symphony settings.

That touring experience helped Ursin recognize a profound demand for Finnish music among diasporic audiences. Many Finnish Americans, especially second-, third- and fourth-generation listeners, may not speak Finnish fluently, but they still carry cultural memory through songs, surnames, festivals, family stories and inherited emotional landscapes.

My Finnish Soul Vol. 2 appears to grow directly from that realization.

What to Expect From My Finnish Soul Vol. 2

According to Finlandia Foundation National, My Finnish Soul Vol. 2 continues Ursin’s exploration of Finnish musical nostalgia through beloved classics in intimate voice-and-piano arrangements. The album includes Finnish cultural favorites such as “Ievan polkka,” “Sininen ja valkoinen” and “Juokse sinä humma.” It also features three original compositions by Ursin, written from the perspective of a Finn living abroad and exploring memory, identity and belonging. One of the originals, “Sisu Song,” draws from the Finnish concept of sisu: resilience, determination and inner strength.

That balance between classic material and new writing may be the album’s defining evolution. If Vol. 1 was rooted in audience requests, nostalgia and familiar Finnish songs reinterpreted through Ursin’s voice, Vol. 2 appears to place Ursin’s own immigrant story more prominently at the center.

In the True North podcast, she also speaks about becoming fascinated with Finnish and Nordic immigration history. She describes researching Ellis Island records and discovering that a relative, her grandmother’s aunt Anna, came to the United States in 1908. That discovery reframed her own journey to America as part of a much longer family and cultural continuum.

This context makes “New Yorkista Puumalaan” feel like more than a personal song. It becomes part of a larger story: Finns crossing oceans, building lives elsewhere, and later generations trying to understand what home means when it exists in more than one place.

A Career Built Across Borders

Ursin’s ability to hold these layers together comes from a career that has never fit neatly into one category. Born in Helsinki in 1977, she studied classical music and oboe for many years while continuing to sing and play piano in bands. Her interest in jazz deepened in high school, eventually leading her to formal jazz vocal studies. In 2001, she won first prize in the Lady Summertime international jazz vocal competition, an early milestone that introduced her to broader Finnish jazz audiences.

Her debut album Violet was released in 2005, followed by Yellow Page Girl in 2009, Jäljet in 2017, Speechless in 2022, My Finnish Soul in 2023 and Eeppinen Joulu – Epic Christmas in 2024. Her official biography also notes that she appears on more than 40 recordings, including five platinum- or gold-selling albums.

She has performed with acclaimed artists and ensembles including trumpeter Leroy Jones and Spirit of New Orleans, vocal ensemble Club For Five and UMO Jazz Orchestra. She has also composed and arranged for theaters and modern opera ensembles, further underscoring the breadth of her musical life.

That versatility matters because “New Yorkista Puumalaan” is deceptively simple in concept. It is a song about wanting to leave the city and return to the lake. But beneath that simplicity lies a musician who understands how harmony tells a story, how language carries memory, and how nostalgia can be made contemporary rather than sentimental.

Finnishness, Reimagined From Abroad

What makes Ursin’s current work compelling is that it refuses to treat Finnishness as static. In her hands, Finnish identity is not frozen in the past. It is sung from New York apartments, Finnish summer cabins, Scandinavian festivals, livestreams, jazz clubs and diaspora gatherings across the United States.

Finlandia Foundation National describes My Finnish Soul Vol. 2 as part of Ursin’s growing body of work centered on Finnish culture and nostalgia, following My Finnish Soul, Eeppinen Joulu – Epic Christmas and My Finnish School. The organization also notes that she will bring the new music to audiences at Finnish and Nordic cultural festivals in the Pacific Northwest, including the Astoria Scandinavian Midsummer Festival in Oregon and the Naselle Finnish American Folk Festival in Washington.

Those settings are significant. They place the album not only in the world of digital streaming, but in living communities where Finnish-American heritage is still practiced, danced, sung, cooked, remembered and reinvented.

A Song of Return

“New Yorkista Puumalaan” arrives as a song of longing, but also of clarity. It understands the beauty of New York — its energy, languages, ambition and scale — while admitting that even the most dazzling metropolis can become too much. For Ursin, Puumala is not an escape from life. It is a return to life’s source.

The single sets the tone for My Finnish Soul Vol. 2: an album likely to speak to Finns, Finnish Americans, Nordic immigrants, and anyone who has ever felt split between the place they live and the place that formed them.

In “New Yorkista Puumalaan,” Ursin sings from the threshold between those worlds. The result is deeply Finnish, unmistakably personal and quietly universal — a reminder that sometimes the longest journey is not across the Atlantic, but back to the roots waiting inside us.