LONG AGO COMMENTS

The Moravian recorders wrote "spruce-pine" to describe the tree like marks.  The composer probably knew that a location named "spruce-pine" was similar to saying "anywhere and everywhere."
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Twenty one (21) rivers flow into James Bay, Canada.   But there are six (6) major rivers.  Three on each side of James Bay. Most of the rivers flow into James Bay from the southeast or southwest.   
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The composer may have sketched James Bay as a high flying goose would see it.  The six branches of the "spruce-pine" may represent the six major rivers.
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Words saying an "abundance of rivers" and a sketch with three major rivers from the east and the west would describe an unique place.  That place could only be James Bay.
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Europeans tried to claim the land by naming the lakes, rivers, and mountains. Four (4) centuries after the French and over three (3) centuries after the English claimed the James Bay, nine (9) of the rivers flowing into James Bay still have Lenape names.
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If names imply possession, then Lenape still own 43 percent of 
James Bay.

DECIPHERMENT STORY 

In the spring of 2011 Frank Esposito asked a student, Craig Judge, to attempt to decipher a stanza of the Maalan Aarum. 

Craig was handicapped because he did not have all eight volumes of the Viking and the Red Man.  We worked out a system where I would locate the Lenape word in Sherwin's volumes and send the specific pages to Craig via the internet. 

During that effort Craig deciphered stanza 4.1 and most of stanza 4.2.

His decipherment was important for three reasons.

First, he demonstrated that another person could decipher the recorded sounds by selecting the possible Lenape words that made the sounds.

Second, he and I began to use the Drottkvaett format as a method to determine the quality of the decipherment.  We developed a scoring system.  If 90% of the expected alliterations and rhymes were found in the expected locations then we decided the decipherment was valid.

We also began to understand that the composer was deliberately loading the stanza's with more than the required number of alliterations and rhymes.  The composer may have been overloading the stanzas because they may have been easier to remember.  

Also the Drottkvaett communication method may have benefitted from extra allitterations and rhymes.  Perhaps, if the key alliteration syllable was not remembered, the receiver could still believe the stanza if many alliterations and rhymes indicated that a composer had put the stanza together.

Third, and most IMPORTANT, Craig determined that the sound "Shinaking" means an "abundance of rivers" and not the "Spruce-Pine" that the Moravian recorders used.  Thus the ending of Maalan Aarum chapter 3, and the beginning of chapter 4 was at James Bay, Canada.

At all times during the decipherment Craig and I used only the Lenape and Old Norse words and definitions that we could find in the Viking and the Red Man.  As the decipherment progressed the Drottkvaett score usually improved as the Lenape syllables were converted to Old Norse syllables.  This Drottkvaett improvement may mean that Old Norse was the original language.

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