The Cultural History of the Fly Agaric: From Siberian Shamans to Santa Claus and Super Mario

July 31, 2026

Tre röda flugsvampar i olika mognadsstadier i gräs

Few mushrooms are as instantly recognisable as the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria). Its bright red cap with white spots is almost archetypal for how we picture a "mushroom" at all – before this image existed, there was hardly any other reference point. But the fly agaric's reach goes far beyond its looks. For over ten thousand years, people across several continents, entirely independently of one another, seem to have been fascinated by this very mushroom: Siberian peoples built winter rituals around it, Nordic folklore has tied it to Santa Claus's earliest form, Victorian artists made it the emblem of fairyland, and today an Italian plumber jumps on it in every single Super Mario game. In this article we follow the fly agaric's journey through human cultural history – from the shaman's drum to the foot of the Christmas tree.

Three red fly agaric mushrooms at different stages of maturity in grass

The fly agaric's distinctive red-and-white pattern changes with age – from an almost fully covered, dome-shaped "egg" to the flattened, spotted cap most people recognise. Image: Onderwijsgek, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

A mushroom that grows wild in Swedish forests

Before we dive into the mythology, it's worth remembering that the fly agaric is nothing exotic – it grows wild in both coniferous and birch forests across much of the northern hemisphere, Sweden included. It forms mycorrhiza, a symbiotic relationship with tree roots, and mainly appears in late summer and autumn. The name "fly agaric" comes from its historical use as a fly trap when soaked in milk – flies were lured by the sugar and stupefied by the mushroom's natural toxins. It's also where Carl Linnaeus took the species name muscaria, from the Latin musca, "fly".

The shaman's mushroom: fly agaric in Siberia

The best-documented and oldest cultural use of the fly agaric comes from Siberia. Peoples such as the Koryaks, Chukchi and Evenki of north-eastern Siberia have used dried fly agaric in shamanic rituals for centuries – documented by European ethnographers since at least the 1700s, though likely with roots stretching back much further. Ahead of a ceremony the shaman would fast and meditate, after which the dried mushrooms were consumed amid drumming and chanting to bring on a trance-like state in which the shaman was believed able to communicate with the spirit world.

One of the more unusual features of this tradition is that the fly agaric's active compounds, ibotenic acid and muscimol, largely pass through the body unchanged via the kidneys. This meant other participants in the ceremony would sometimes drink the shaman's urine to achieve a similar, milder and "cleaner" effect – a practice reindeer themselves are also drawn to; it's well documented that reindeer actively seek out and eat fly agaric in the wild.

The Sámi, Santa Claus and the Nordic theory

Reindeer's attraction to the fly agaric leads us to one of the most widespread – and most debated – theories about the mushroom's cultural legacy: its connection to Santa Claus. According to the theory, Sámi shamans would gather and dry fly agaric to hand out as gifts at the winter solstice, and since snow often blocked the doors, the mushrooms were passed in through the smoke hole in the roof instead. Reindeer's well-known appetite for the mushroom, combined with the idea of the shaman's "flying" trance journeys, has been put forward by some researchers and popular-science writers as a possible explanation for the image of flying reindeer. The red-and-white outfit has similarly been linked to the mushroom's colouring.

It's important to be clear that this is a popular hypothesis, not an established scientific fact – Sweden's Museum of Natural History has itself addressed the question under the heading "Is Santa Claus a shaman?", concluding that the connection is intriguing but hard to prove historically. The modern, commercial image of Santa Claus was instead shaped largely by 19th-century American newspaper illustrators and, later, Coca-Cola's advertising campaigns in the 1930s. The truth likely lies somewhere in between: several independent northern traditions – Siberian, Sámi, and later Western – have all contributed layer upon layer to the Santa Claus we know today, with no single source alone explaining him.

The berserkers – a Viking myth that doesn't hold up

Another well-known but far more contested theory concerns the Viking-age berserkers – warriors who, according to the sagas, could be thrown into a raging, pain-insensitive battle fury. The Swedish clergyman and naturalist Samuel Ödman proposed as early as 1784 that this berserker rage could be explained by fly agaric poisoning, an idea that has lived on ever since in popular science, documentaries and the occasional academic text.

Modern historians, however, largely agree the theory doesn't hold up. The critique, first formulated by historian Howard Fabing in the 1950s and refined since, points to both a geographical and a chronological gap: the evidence rests almost entirely on 18th-century Siberian shamanic practice – a wholly different time, place and culture from Viking-age Scandinavia. The fly agaric's known effects – dizziness, nausea and a dreamlike, inward-turned intoxication – also sit poorly with the sagas' descriptions of controlled, outward-directed fury. Researchers such as Karsten Fatur have instead suggested that the poisonous plant henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), well known and available in Viking-age Scandinavia, fits the symptoms better. The berserker myth is a good reminder of how easily a clever hypothesis can become "truth" simply by being repeated often enough.

Soma – the drink of the gods in the Rigveda

Far from the north and Siberia lies yet another of the fly agaric's most debated connections: the Vedic sacrificial drink soma, celebrated in over a hundred hymns in the ancient Indo-Iranian Rigveda (roughly 1500–1200 BCE). Soma is described as a divine, consciousness-expanding drink brewed from a plant whose exact identity has been lost to history.

In 1968, American ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson put forward a theory in his book Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality: that soma was in fact the fly agaric. Wasson pointed both to textual clues – the Rigveda never mentions leaves, flowers, seeds or roots of the soma plant, suggesting it wasn't an ordinary plant – and to the Siberian urine tradition as a possible explanation for why soma is linked to urination in some hymns. The theory is elegant but far from uncontested: critics have pointed out, among other things, that the Rigveda's descriptions of soma being pressed and filtered sit awkwardly with how fly agaric was actually prepared, and several alternative candidates – from ephedra to various climbing plants – have been proposed over the years. The true identity of soma is still considered one of the great unsolved puzzles in the history of religion.

The fly agaric conquers art and fairyland

If the fly agaric's role in shamanism and religion is hard to prove, its entry into Western European art is far more clearly documented. The mushroom crops up sporadically as early as Renaissance art, but it's during the Victorian era of the 1800s that it truly takes centre stage – as the very emblem of the world of fairy tales and fairies.

Painting by John Anster Fitzgerald featuring fairies and a fly agaric mushroom at the centre, circa 1860

"The Intruder" by John Anster Fitzgerald (c. 1860), one of the best-known figures in Victorian fairy art. The fly agaric is a recurring motif in his paintings. Image: Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

British artist John Anster Fitzgerald, nicknamed "Fairy Fitzgerald", is perhaps the clearest example – his paintings are positively teeming with fairies, goblins and fly agarics in dreamlike, sometimes dark scenes. Contemporary illustrators such as Richard Doyle contributed similar motifs in books like In Fairyland (1870), where fly agarics are consistently depicted as homes, seats and meeting places for fairy folk.

Illustration by Richard Doyle with fairies among fly agarics and fairy rings, 1870

Richard Doyle's illustration "Fairy Rings and Toadstools" (1870) is one of many examples of how the fly agaric was woven into the Victorian image of the fairy world. Image: Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

It wasn't primarily the mushroom's chemistry that made it such a popular symbol, but its visual contrast – the bright red colour with white spots signalled both beauty and danger at once, perfect for depicting the supernatural. From there it's a short step to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (1865), where Alice eats from a mushroom that makes her grow and shrink – a scene which, although the mushroom is never explicitly named, has in centuries of illustration almost always been depicted as a fly agaric.

From Christmas décor to Super Mario

The Victorian visual world left a lasting mark. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the fly agaric became a popular good-luck motif on European Christmas cards and tree ornaments – a tradition that still lives on in countries like Germany and Austria, where small fly agaric figurines ("Glückspilz", "lucky mushroom") are still sold as good-luck charms around New Year.

The red-and-white spotted cap became so deeply embedded as fairyland's standard symbol for "mushroom" that it's still, to this day, the image most people picture when thinking of gnomes, fairies and enchanted forests – from garden gnomes and children's books to Disney's Fantasia (1940), where dancing fly agarics feature in one of the film's most famous sequences. When Nintendo set out to design Super Mario's famous "Super Mushroom" in the 1980s, they didn't need to invent anything new – they simply returned to a visual tradition that was already several hundred years old.

A natural collector's item today

From Siberian shaman drums to eight-bit video games – few organisms have travelled so far through the human imagination as the fly agaric. It's precisely this rich, millennia-old history that makes it so popular as a botanical collector's item and decoration to this day – a naturally beautiful mushroom with a story in every spot.

At Växtbutiken we sell dried fly agaric, whole caps or ground, exclusively as a natural botanical specimen for collectors, mycology enthusiasts and decoration – not for consumption. Curious about the legal situation in Sweden? We cover it in detail in our article: Is fly agaric legal in Sweden?

⚠️ In accordance with Swedish and EU regulations, fly agaric from Växtbutiken is not intended as a dietary supplement, medicine, or otherwise for human consumption. Keep out of reach of children and pets.