This was weird; I can't imagine the one I had a while -- hey, oops, over a decade! -- ago was all that much younger than yours, and that was quite identifiable whole little fishies. I remember splitting them into two fillets, scraping off some skin and fins, etc.

Lutfisk[1], OTOH, is just bacalhau[2] that's soaked in a bit of lye in stead of just water to soften it faster. (Except that, at least in the Swedish tradition, it's supposed to be made out of ling[3] in stead of cod.) Nowadays the whole thing is of course unnecessary, so it's one of those frozen-in-time old dishes that nobody (except really old folk[4]) really likes, that is eaten only on Christmas (or for some other dishes, other high holidays) out of "tradition". This may, BTW, explain the weird rigmarole I saw in one American recipe online, of soaking it in lye again, after you've already got most of it out by soaking in water.

Anyway, whichever way you make it: Lutfisk is just a more or less gelatinous mass, tasting more or less of fish and/or lye. The worst thing about it is 100% the consistency, not the taste -- not that the taste is particularly great either. Surtrömming, OTOH... You have to get past the smell, and the be a fan of pickled fish in the first place, in order to appreciate that, once -- if -- you're even able to discern it. Not to be mentioned in the same breath as puny lutfisk.

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1: No 'e' in it in Swedish; seems English went with the Norwegian spelling.

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockfish

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ling

4: My mother-in-law is quite keen on it.

Like, if those Scandinavian-Alaskans -- presumably more familiar with the ling than the average English-speaker around them -- thought "this looks a bit like a cod, and a bit like a ling, so..." Dunno how much of an effect they could have had on the English name, but perhaps?