A psychrotolerant, Gram-stain-positive, yellow-pigmented, aerobic rod, designated SK1(T), was isolated from a soil sample collected from Store Koldewey, north-east Greenland. Cells were catalase- and methyl red-positive, produced H(2)S and produced acid from glucose, mannitol and salicin. Strain SK1(T) was able to grow between -6 and 28 °C, with an optimum at 20 °C. The isolate contained 2,4-diaminobutyrate, glycine, alanine and glutamic acid in the cell wall and the major menaquinones were MK-10 and MK-11. Identified polar lipids were phosphatidylglycerol and diphosphatidylglycerol. The major fatty acids were anteiso-C(15 : 0) (53.5 %), anteiso-C(17 : 0) (17.0 %) and C(18 : 0) (12.1 %). The genomic DNA G+C content was 67.8 mol%. Strain SK1(T) showed the highest 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity with Cryobacterium psychrotolerans 0549(T) (97.6 %) and Cryobacterium roopkundense RuGl7(T) (96.8 %). Considering morphological, physiological, biochemical and chemotaxonomic characters and phylogenetic analysis, strain SK1(T) represents a novel species in the genus Cryobacterium, for which the name Cryobacterium arcticum sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is SK1(T) ( = DSM 22823(T) = NCCB 100316(T)).