The Broom King
The broom king, the broom that rules all brooms, from the Swedish tale 'The Broom's Broom King of All Brooms'. In the tale a broom proves to be the king of its kind, sweeping away the story's dangers with a command that no other broom could match. The tale plays on the humble household object raised to kingship, a comic inversion in the spirit of the Scandinavian wonder-tales where the lowliest tool of the house shows the greatest power. The broom was in any case no ordinary thing in folk belief, being used to sweep out evil at the threshold, to sweep luck into the house at New Year, and as a