Nils Ludvig Arppe

Arppe's parents were lagman Nils Arppe and Margareta Sofia née Wegelius. Nils Ludvig was second oldest from eight children, who lagman Nils Arppe got in his three marriages. The home language in the family was Swedish which he preferred to use in his letters. Also his Finnish was excellent, and when Arppe went to school in Savonlinna, the teaching language was German. He went to gymnasium in Turku and graduated in 1820. Arppe followed his father's steps and studied law. He graduated in 1823 as jurist. Arppe worked shortly as court of appeal trainee in Vaasa, but he left the lawyer career already in the same year. The reason was unexpected death of his father; Arppe supposed that he could not earn enough as a lawyer to be able to take care of his siblings, and therefore he decided to return to North Karelia.

Arppe was married to Jeannette Charlotta née Porthan in 1841, but she died already in 1843. In 1845, Arppe married her sister Matilds, who died ten years later. Arppe's third wife was Amalia Kristina née Seitz. He had altogether eleven children.

Arppe remained faithful to his home county and he had a reputation as a man on whose word one can count. While he was a hard industrialist, he had the ability to identify the capable people among uneducated peasants and put them to responsible positions; such were Taneli Rouvinen, Staffan Riikonen and Paul Hendunen, who worked as plant managers.

Arppe had far-reaching plans for developing his business, but they did not materialise before he fell seriously ill. Despite being partly paralysed, he wanted to be in place seeing when the last pieces of machinery of his rolling plant, warped along river Jänisjoki, arrived in Värtsilä. Arppe died in 1861, shortly before era of economical deregulation in Finland.

Arppe left as inheritance a significant amount of land; according to estimates, it totalled 120,000–130,000 hectares. His business was continued after and led to development of Wärtsilä company.