alt Hacker NewsI bet there is some mushroom species in Europe as well that contains that substance. All those stories about dwarfs, trolls etc. and especially in woody area's, they must have come from somewhere.
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Not sure about the exact same active substance, but Amanita muscaria is the obvious candidate. It's also commonly shown as part of the imagery in stories involving tiny people: the Smurfs, Super Mario (it's the power-up that makes Mario bigger/smaller), Fantasia, Alice in Wonderland, and so on.
Folklore’s roots go deeper than a single species.
Swedish tradition has it that trolls would replace human babies with their own babies. It does not take a long leap of imagination to to see how this could be used as an excuse for the practice of putting unwanted/deformed babies out into the forest ”for the wolves”. (Disclaimer: I don’t know how common that practice might have been, since it would presumably stem from prehistoric times)
Since dwarfs (little people) actually exist, I don't think we need to reach into psychedelics for an explanation.
There's some variety of little people myth in most cultures. There's also giant myths in most and there's no mushroom for that.
I think those kinds of myths are just natural progressions of exaggerations and oral storytelling