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" italic=no" (Finnish for "Ieva's Polka") is a Finland song with lyrics printed in 1928 and written by Eino Kettunen to a traditional Finnish polka tune. The song is sung in an Eastern Savonian dialect spoken in North Karelia. It is sung from the point of view of a young man, about a woman called Ieva (dialectal for the name Eva or Eeva in standard Finnish language) who sneaks out and dances the polka with him all night. The song is often mistaken for a traditional folk song, but the lyrics by Eino Kettunen were under copyright until 1 January 2024. Later, a scat singing version of the song by the band Loituma was incorporated into the viral animation Loituma Girl. In 2007, the song was brought into worldwide popular culture through a cover sung by Hatsune Miku, with Otomania arranging the music and providing Miku's voice manipulation.
The song is in the minor hexatonic musical mode; the Loituma version is in E-flat minor.
Very popular after World War II, the song was almost forgotten during the late 1970s and 1980s. The song resurfaced after an a cappella performance by the Finnish quartet Loituma on the Yle TV2 show Soi soitto soi in 1996, whose song was first released on their debut album, Loituma, in 1995. The Loituma lyrics and arrangement are under copyright and published by Warner Chappell Music outside the Nordic countries. The album was released in the United States as Things of Beauty in 1998.
The Loituma version of the song acquired great international popularity as part of an Internet phenomenon in the spring of 2006, when the Loituma Girl (also known as Leekspin), a looped animation of anime character Orihime Inoue from the Bleach series twirling either a spring onion (in the Japanese original) or a leek (in the English dub), set to a scat singing section of the song, was posted on Russian LiveJournal. For the animation, only the second half of the fifth stanza (four lines) and the complete sixth stanza (eight lines) are used. It quickly became a global hit and the song soon enjoyed overwhelming popularity as a ringtone. Since then, the song has been circulating under several misspelled variations of its original name, including "Ievas polkka", "Levan polkka" (due to the similarity between the sans-serif lowercase L (l) and uppercase i (I)) and "Leekspin Song".
Fans of the Vocaloid software have made Vocaloid voicebanks, such as Megurine Luka, Kagamine Rin, and Kagamine Len cover the song. The most popular Vocaloid cover belonged to Japanese artist Otomania, who in 2007 made Hatsune Miku sing it with the Nonsense song by Loituma. The official music video has garnered close to 6.5 million views on Niconico by May 2024. It features a chibi derivative of Hatsune Miku, officially known as Hatchune Miku, holding a spring onion in reference to Loituma Girl, and is the origin of her association with spring onions or leeks. Its popularity resulted in its use by the Vocaloid rhythm game series , mainly as tutorial music. It has also been used in a commercial promoting the LG G5 smartphone.
In 2012, the Finnish folk metal band Korpiklaani recorded a cover of the song for their eighth album Manala. A version of the song performed by Anne Kulonen was part of a Ready Brek television advert aired in the United Kingdom.
A part of the song was featured during the interval show of the Eurovision Song Contest 2024, played over a brief Finland dance tribute, with performers dressed in the Finnish national attire and Sauna towels, dancing around Moomins-characters, before Käärijä entering, performing his "Cha Cha Cha" song from the Eurovision Song Contest 2023.
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