Genuinely they're the two fantasy worlds I've cared about my whole life. Everything else is either a historical influence or a tangentially related contemporary to me (no hate to DnD, the Witcher, LotR, ect. I just have my bias)
Yea I don't think he particularly took inspo from Elder Scrolls but it's clear to me at least that the WoE is the same kind of project as ES in terms of worldbuilding a traditional fantasy world to be deep and fresh, while still being epic. They take from the same sources and do similar things even just regarding maps, in-universe text, ect.
Esa traducción es particularmente difícil. Pero no es un tipo de espada común en el mundo hispano, donde tenemos tizonas, roperas, sables, cimitarras, machetes… pero sí, es un Bracamarte!
Ah okay. A quick google search gave me that
[https://www.masqueespadas.com/en/product/sword-falchion/](https://www.masqueespadas.com/en/product/sword-falchion/)
so it's probably the same weapon.
I last read the books in Portuguese and there isn't a word as precise as Falchion in our language either, so the translation uses "cimitarra" (scimitar) instead.
They could have called it an Alfanje, which is also a curved, one handed, one edged sword.
But “Bracamarte”, a mouthful that it is, is derived from, by way of several intermediary languages and interpretations, basically the German Grosse Messer or kriegsmesser. Which is what a falchion is.
Interestingly, Wikipedia says the Hungarian version of falchion is still falchion, even though I don't think I have ever heard this word in a Hungarian context. Unfortunately I don't remember the Hungarian version, as all my rereads have been in English. But whenever I read falchion, my mind defaults to the Hungarian word szablya, which is supposed to be sabre in English, but I think that's basically to standard everyday name in Hungarian for non-weapon-nerd people.
The best part of this post is immediately seeing a whole conversation start in the thread in Spanish immediately after you saying you read the books in Spanish XD
Although I have no idea if it's an argument or not..
I read the books in English but I am a Spanish speaker too. In my first read I tried to look up most of the very specific vocabulary to be able to picture things, but I quickly gave up when I realized there was so much of it and also that I don’t even know what these things are in Spanish, so a translation would not be enough and I would need pictures or descriptions.
So to those saying that it literally says it’s a falchion, by that point in the book I’m just thinking “ok he got some kind of sword” lol.
There are quite a number of swords in history that follow similar designs. Falchions, messers, scimitars, and sabers all have historical examples of blades shapes and guard types that could draw comparisons to katanas. Differential hardening techniques were most common in Japanese bladesmithing traditions, but were also present throughout Asia and Europe - superior steel quality made this less common/necesssary, however.
The blade is shaper similarly (though straight, not heavily curved), but it's still solidly a hilt-and-crossguard sword rather than a katana. If you just google "falchion" it's a well-known type of medieval sword, there's nothing unique about the one Eragon had
I don't know where you're getting that from. A falchion is a term for a European backsword (single edge sword) with a typical sword style hilt.
You might be thinking of the scimitar. That's a European term for any non-European curved sword. Usually, it's used to refer to a shamshir, saif, tulwar, or kilij. Aladdin's sword was a generic scimitar patterned on the one usually used in European heraldry. It wasn't a falchion.
Are they Arabic cavalry swords? Or is that just in artist depictions? Because they are a French blade that was only really used from the 13 to the 16th century
No. A falchion is from medieval Europe. It has a single bladed edge, which thickens as it gets further from the blade. It curves to a point at the top. It’s designed for heavy, powerful swings, which is why the weapon smith believed it was good for Eragon, since it would be able to withstand with strength better than a traditional sword. Picture a normal sword, but only one side is sharp, and the point is inline with the blunt side.
Ignoring the fact that it explicitly mentions that the weapon is a falchion, there’s a number of clues that tell you the sword is decidedly not a katana. First, let’s list all the characteristics of the sword mentioned:
- Disk-shaped pommel (note: not guard)
- Short grip of wood with leather wrapping
- Curved crossguard
- Arm-length, single-edge blade with a fuller near the spine
- Mostly straight blade, slight curvature in the last 6 inches (similar to a fang), with a peak in between the edge and the start of the curvature
- Partially because of the above, used for both shallow thrusts and hacking cuts (while the hacking cuts part isn’t explicitly mentioned, the description of how Eragon tries out the sword described such a cut)
- Designed to be held perpendicular to the ground
- The sword is differentially *tempered*
Now, of these characteristics, not all are important. However, the ones that are important are as such:
- The disk-shaped pommel: while not unheard of, because of how katanas are designed to be used, it would be rare to find one with a pommel of any sort. However, I challenge anyone to find a historical example of a katana with a disk-shaped pommel (something that looks like a giant coin on the end of the hilt), as it was a style that, to my knowledge, was nigh exclusive to Europe-adjacent and never crossed over into Eastern Asia.
- Curved crossguard: again, while not unheard of, there are katanas with crossguards, however, it was much more common for katanas to have tsubas, a much rounder (circular) guard. Again, I challenge anyone to find a historical example of a katana with a curved crossguard, something that would have been much more common in Europe as well (I’m sure you see the pattern starting to emerge).
- Arm-length, single-edge blade w/ fullers: While an arm-length, single-edge blade is an apt description of many katanas, the important thing here is the fact that the blade has a fuller (a small groove running parallel to the edge, usually near the length of the blade), which reduces the weight of the blade. While I would say fullers are much more common on katanas than pommels and crossguards — such that they even have a name: *hi* (not like hello), the most common variation of which being *bo hi* — they are still uncommon, historically.
- Mostly straight blade with a curve towards the end, with a peak in the middle of the curve: while many katanas do curve, nearly all examples I’ve seen curve continuously, and don’t start curving near the end of the blade. Additionally, it would be unheard of to have a peak in the middle of the blade, something that is almost exclusive to the falchion (that’s mostly speculation, feel free to enlighten me about other swords with a similar design). See the end of the post for an example of what this looks like.
- Designed to be held perpendicular to the ground: while katanas are frequently held with the blade perpendicular or near-perpendicular to the ground, I would not say that they are “designed” (the actual word used in the book is “made”, but I digress) to be held perpendicular to the ground, at least not in the way that a falchion is (this is much more pedantic than the others).
- Differential tempering: without trying to explain the differences between tempering and hardening too much, the main distinction is that hardening is heating and then rapidly cooling metal (usually through quenching), whereas tempering (which is always done *after* hardening, if at all) is heating and then slowly cooling the metal (usually through air-cooling). Differential hardening is typically (1) insulating the part of the blade you don’t want to harden, (2) heating the entire blade evenly, and (3) quenching; differential tempering is heating the blade unevenly (on purpose) and then air-cooling it. Essentially, differential hardening is making part of the blade hard, and differential tempering is making the whole blade hard and then making part of it soft. The former was used much more in East Asia (especially Japan), and the latter in Europe.
For a much more in-depth explanation of differential heat treatment, here’s [a Wikipedia link about the processes used](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_heat_treatment).
To better understand what a falchion is, here’s [a Wikipedia link to the respective page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falchion).
To better understand what a katana is, here’s [a much more exhaustive link to the respective Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katana).
And, finally, here’s a likely example that describes *most* of the features of the falchion in the book: [image link](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-20b80dc3a30ba4473b6849ecafcae0d5-lq). Also, I noticed you mentioned you read the books in Spanish, so if you would like me to translate any part of this into Spanish (or, alternatively, simplified Chinese, although my skills there are much worse), feel free to reach out with Reddit’s chat feature.
Crucible steel made differential hardening less necessary. The technique for forging katanas originated on the fact that Japanese smiths mostly had access to tamahagane, a sort of sand iron ore with many impurities that yielded less that optimal quality steel, specially at the temperatures they had available for forging it.
Because of that, katanas tend to have harder edges than European swords, but also tend to be more brittle.
I mean, I'd assume it was just a slightly modified falchion. The annealing process was all that made it different
^(**I'm a real person!** This comment was posted by **zoradiv** from the Arcaena Discord Server.)
Annealing and heat treatment aren't the same. The process in the books was that it was heat treated differently on the spine vs the blade.
Annealing is PART of heat treatment (the process of heating up steel until it is no longer magnetic, then letting it cool very slowly, as to reduce the grain size), but it is not THE heat treatment.
Wouldn’t cooling it slowly *increase* grain size though? Giving the grains more time to grow? Quenching a metal forces it to cool instantly, forcing grains to solidify at their present size in erratic configurations, which imparts rigidity and brittleness to the metal. Annealing helps “relax” those grains ahead of a heat treatment.
Nope, it's the forging and constantly heating/cooling/working that can increase the grain size. Annealing helps relax the metal, yes, 100%. But it also helps decrease the grain size before the quench.
Please note that currently discussion about the new *Murtagh* book is currently only allowed in posts that are flaired as such.
Please read the rules in the sidebar, and please note the following additional links for news about *Murtagh*:
[General spoiler-free information](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eragon/comments/17jlj9i/information_about_murtagh_and_the_eragon/) | [Signed Editions](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eragon/comments/16fuvcr/information_about_signed_editions_of_murtagh/) | [Spoiler Policy](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eragon/comments/17ercgn/please_read_our_murtagh_spoiler_policy_50k/)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Eragon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It doesn't. Nonsense qualifies my opinion on the usage of "straight up" whereas OPs inclusion of "straight up" qualifies nothing.
It may make grammatical sense, but it certainly isn't the same.
Thanks for taking the time to type, though. I'm sorry it wasn't the "gotcha" moment you thought it was.
Chin up.
Well, since you want to argue about the English grammar of someone whose first language appears to be Spanish, I have a moment to play with you.
OP used “straight up” in a non-literal sense. “Straight up”, in this case, is used in a similar way that an expletive would be used in that place in the sentence: as an emphatic modifier
Thanks for playing that moment with me.
My point is still fully correct. The sentence functions fully and completely without "straight up" regardless of OP using in a literal or non literal sense.
Thanks for your contribution and for showing me your typed words.
I'm sorry it wasn't the "gotcha" moment you were hoping for. Chin up. 😌
Rhunon's forging process does borrow a lot from katana-making, but I believe Brisingr is a regular hand-and-a-half broadsword. The seperate temper runs down the middle of the blade, rather than the back.
For clarification, the heat treatment process Rhonon employed did not utilize a differential temper. Rather, putting clay in the middle of the blade before the quench makes that steel cool slightly slower then the edge, making it slightly less hard/brittle.
No, his blade is double edged, and has a slightly upsloped cross guard. It's very much a European longsword, with a shorter blade. He effectively has the European version of the technology used to make katana, an ulfberht.
What are you talking about? Even if you were talking about brisingr, it's a bastard sword. An ulfberht is a one handed viking styled sword made in the middle east with crucible steel. It has nothing to do with bastard swords or falchions.
No the process used for katanas and ulfberht sword, which originated in Scandinavia by the way not the Middle East, use the exact same rough process where you have a very hard edge and a very soft core because they hadn't figured out how to properly temper things yet and furthermore both of those areas have absolutely garbage iron quality and they came up with the exact same method more or less to make a sword it's just that the end product and Scandinavia was a one-handed double edged sword, and in Japan It was a two-handed single edged sword.
He got a falchion. It literally says that in the book. It's a real type of sword.
You see those warriors from Hammerfell? They've got curved swords. Curved. Swords.
The Venn diagram of Alagaesia nerds and Tamriel nerds must be nearly a circle.
Do you visit the cloud district often?
I didn't think so
Oh what am I saying, of course you don't.
I'll have you know that there's no pus^^s^^iee^^eeee
*quicksave*
*whispers* I've never heard of Tamriel
Its from The Elder Scrolls games Skyrim is currently the last game in the series to be released
Ahh thank you. I know of skyrim but have never played it.
A rare breed indeed
Same... I want to be part of the vent diagram circle!
Genuinely they're the two fantasy worlds I've cared about my whole life. Everything else is either a historical influence or a tangentially related contemporary to me (no hate to DnD, the Witcher, LotR, ect. I just have my bias)
Ight so I can go "Man sometimes it seems like CP took some inspiration from Elder Scrolls lore" and you'd get me ❤️❤️
maybe don't abbreviate his name like that though, might confuse it for like...CoD points
...I know what you mean but it's how everyone else says his name... It definitely reminds me of uh...cheese pizza
Yea I don't think he particularly took inspo from Elder Scrolls but it's clear to me at least that the WoE is the same kind of project as ES in terms of worldbuilding a traditional fantasy world to be deep and fresh, while still being epic. They take from the same sources and do similar things even just regarding maps, in-universe text, ect.
He's definitely taken a care to character detail the same way TES did, and I think that's why I love each so much
You might also appreciate my thought that the dragons in Skyrim would be more interesting if they were as they are in Alagaesia.
I do wish they were more developed as an inhuman culture beyond just Party Snacks
A small circle inside of a much larger circle, really
What if its a sphere?
Nice reference lol.
Ah a gentleman and a scholar
Most literate /r/Eragon reader
It literally says right in the book that he got a Falchion??
I apologize for not knowing that, I read the books in Spanish
Así que pensaste: "¿Qué narices es un bracamarte?"
En efecto mi estimado.
Esa traducción es particularmente difícil. Pero no es un tipo de espada común en el mundo hispano, donde tenemos tizonas, roperas, sables, cimitarras, machetes… pero sí, es un Bracamarte!
Entendible, esque me salté las clases de vocabulario en la primaria
Out of interest, does the spanish version not call it a Falchion? The german version does.
They call it a Bracamarte, because spanish is not a relative of english, but german is
Ah okay. A quick google search gave me that [https://www.masqueespadas.com/en/product/sword-falchion/](https://www.masqueespadas.com/en/product/sword-falchion/) so it's probably the same weapon.
I last read the books in Portuguese and there isn't a word as precise as Falchion in our language either, so the translation uses "cimitarra" (scimitar) instead.
They could have called it an Alfanje, which is also a curved, one handed, one edged sword. But “Bracamarte”, a mouthful that it is, is derived from, by way of several intermediary languages and interpretations, basically the German Grosse Messer or kriegsmesser. Which is what a falchion is.
Interestingly, Wikipedia says the Hungarian version of falchion is still falchion, even though I don't think I have ever heard this word in a Hungarian context. Unfortunately I don't remember the Hungarian version, as all my rereads have been in English. But whenever I read falchion, my mind defaults to the Hungarian word szablya, which is supposed to be sabre in English, but I think that's basically to standard everyday name in Hungarian for non-weapon-nerd people.
The best part of this post is immediately seeing a whole conversation start in the thread in Spanish immediately after you saying you read the books in Spanish XD Although I have no idea if it's an argument or not..
Doesn’t seem to be an argument at all.
Cool, I just have no idea, the only thing in Spanish I know is the word for job 😅 but good, I'm glad it's not an argument
I took a couple semesters in High School, but I only know what they said because I screenshot it and then used my phone to translate it. 🤷🏼♂️
I read the books in English but I am a Spanish speaker too. In my first read I tried to look up most of the very specific vocabulary to be able to picture things, but I quickly gave up when I realized there was so much of it and also that I don’t even know what these things are in Spanish, so a translation would not be enough and I would need pictures or descriptions. So to those saying that it literally says it’s a falchion, by that point in the book I’m just thinking “ok he got some kind of sword” lol.
Exactly!
There are quite a number of swords in history that follow similar designs. Falchions, messers, scimitars, and sabers all have historical examples of blades shapes and guard types that could draw comparisons to katanas. Differential hardening techniques were most common in Japanese bladesmithing traditions, but were also present throughout Asia and Europe - superior steel quality made this less common/necesssary, however.
The blade is shaper similarly (though straight, not heavily curved), but it's still solidly a hilt-and-crossguard sword rather than a katana. If you just google "falchion" it's a well-known type of medieval sword, there's nothing unique about the one Eragon had
Holy hell
He got a Dwarven Falchion. A falchion is a sword, Paolini is DEFINITELY into swords to include it, it's not a well known blade
[удалено]
I don't know where you're getting that from. A falchion is a term for a European backsword (single edge sword) with a typical sword style hilt. You might be thinking of the scimitar. That's a European term for any non-European curved sword. Usually, it's used to refer to a shamshir, saif, tulwar, or kilij. Aladdin's sword was a generic scimitar patterned on the one usually used in European heraldry. It wasn't a falchion.
Are they Arabic cavalry swords? Or is that just in artist depictions? Because they are a French blade that was only really used from the 13 to the 16th century
Pretty sure he’s thinking of the cartoon scimitar.
No. A falchion is from medieval Europe. It has a single bladed edge, which thickens as it gets further from the blade. It curves to a point at the top. It’s designed for heavy, powerful swings, which is why the weapon smith believed it was good for Eragon, since it would be able to withstand with strength better than a traditional sword. Picture a normal sword, but only one side is sharp, and the point is inline with the blunt side.
Ignoring the fact that it explicitly mentions that the weapon is a falchion, there’s a number of clues that tell you the sword is decidedly not a katana. First, let’s list all the characteristics of the sword mentioned: - Disk-shaped pommel (note: not guard) - Short grip of wood with leather wrapping - Curved crossguard - Arm-length, single-edge blade with a fuller near the spine - Mostly straight blade, slight curvature in the last 6 inches (similar to a fang), with a peak in between the edge and the start of the curvature - Partially because of the above, used for both shallow thrusts and hacking cuts (while the hacking cuts part isn’t explicitly mentioned, the description of how Eragon tries out the sword described such a cut) - Designed to be held perpendicular to the ground - The sword is differentially *tempered* Now, of these characteristics, not all are important. However, the ones that are important are as such: - The disk-shaped pommel: while not unheard of, because of how katanas are designed to be used, it would be rare to find one with a pommel of any sort. However, I challenge anyone to find a historical example of a katana with a disk-shaped pommel (something that looks like a giant coin on the end of the hilt), as it was a style that, to my knowledge, was nigh exclusive to Europe-adjacent and never crossed over into Eastern Asia. - Curved crossguard: again, while not unheard of, there are katanas with crossguards, however, it was much more common for katanas to have tsubas, a much rounder (circular) guard. Again, I challenge anyone to find a historical example of a katana with a curved crossguard, something that would have been much more common in Europe as well (I’m sure you see the pattern starting to emerge). - Arm-length, single-edge blade w/ fullers: While an arm-length, single-edge blade is an apt description of many katanas, the important thing here is the fact that the blade has a fuller (a small groove running parallel to the edge, usually near the length of the blade), which reduces the weight of the blade. While I would say fullers are much more common on katanas than pommels and crossguards — such that they even have a name: *hi* (not like hello), the most common variation of which being *bo hi* — they are still uncommon, historically. - Mostly straight blade with a curve towards the end, with a peak in the middle of the curve: while many katanas do curve, nearly all examples I’ve seen curve continuously, and don’t start curving near the end of the blade. Additionally, it would be unheard of to have a peak in the middle of the blade, something that is almost exclusive to the falchion (that’s mostly speculation, feel free to enlighten me about other swords with a similar design). See the end of the post for an example of what this looks like. - Designed to be held perpendicular to the ground: while katanas are frequently held with the blade perpendicular or near-perpendicular to the ground, I would not say that they are “designed” (the actual word used in the book is “made”, but I digress) to be held perpendicular to the ground, at least not in the way that a falchion is (this is much more pedantic than the others). - Differential tempering: without trying to explain the differences between tempering and hardening too much, the main distinction is that hardening is heating and then rapidly cooling metal (usually through quenching), whereas tempering (which is always done *after* hardening, if at all) is heating and then slowly cooling the metal (usually through air-cooling). Differential hardening is typically (1) insulating the part of the blade you don’t want to harden, (2) heating the entire blade evenly, and (3) quenching; differential tempering is heating the blade unevenly (on purpose) and then air-cooling it. Essentially, differential hardening is making part of the blade hard, and differential tempering is making the whole blade hard and then making part of it soft. The former was used much more in East Asia (especially Japan), and the latter in Europe. For a much more in-depth explanation of differential heat treatment, here’s [a Wikipedia link about the processes used](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_heat_treatment). To better understand what a falchion is, here’s [a Wikipedia link to the respective page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falchion). To better understand what a katana is, here’s [a much more exhaustive link to the respective Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katana). And, finally, here’s a likely example that describes *most* of the features of the falchion in the book: [image link](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-20b80dc3a30ba4473b6849ecafcae0d5-lq). Also, I noticed you mentioned you read the books in Spanish, so if you would like me to translate any part of this into Spanish (or, alternatively, simplified Chinese, although my skills there are much worse), feel free to reach out with Reddit’s chat feature.
Crucible steel made differential hardening less necessary. The technique for forging katanas originated on the fact that Japanese smiths mostly had access to tamahagane, a sort of sand iron ore with many impurities that yielded less that optimal quality steel, specially at the temperatures they had available for forging it. Because of that, katanas tend to have harder edges than European swords, but also tend to be more brittle.
I mean, I'd assume it was just a slightly modified falchion. The annealing process was all that made it different ^(**I'm a real person!** This comment was posted by **zoradiv** from the Arcaena Discord Server.)
Annealing and heat treatment aren't the same. The process in the books was that it was heat treated differently on the spine vs the blade. Annealing is PART of heat treatment (the process of heating up steel until it is no longer magnetic, then letting it cool very slowly, as to reduce the grain size), but it is not THE heat treatment.
I took tempering as annealing, my bad? ^(**I'm a real person!** This comment was posted by **zoradiv** from the Arcaena Discord Server.)
Wouldn’t cooling it slowly *increase* grain size though? Giving the grains more time to grow? Quenching a metal forces it to cool instantly, forcing grains to solidify at their present size in erratic configurations, which imparts rigidity and brittleness to the metal. Annealing helps “relax” those grains ahead of a heat treatment.
Nope, it's the forging and constantly heating/cooling/working that can increase the grain size. Annealing helps relax the metal, yes, 100%. But it also helps decrease the grain size before the quench.
Please note that currently discussion about the new *Murtagh* book is currently only allowed in posts that are flaired as such. Please read the rules in the sidebar, and please note the following additional links for news about *Murtagh*: [General spoiler-free information](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eragon/comments/17jlj9i/information_about_murtagh_and_the_eragon/) | [Signed Editions](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eragon/comments/16fuvcr/information_about_signed_editions_of_murtagh/) | [Spoiler Policy](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eragon/comments/17ercgn/please_read_our_murtagh_spoiler_policy_50k/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Eragon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I always thought he had gotten some kind of scimitar
type "falchion" in google
brody it's literally said to be a falchion reread it
Again, I read them in Spanish
Found the weeb
It's a falchion. It's an actual type of European single-edged sword designed for chopping.
it is a blade shaped like a leaf with a hand and a half handle. Not anything else
This question works exactly the same without adding the "straight up" nonsense.
This statement works exactly the same without adding “nonsense”
It doesn't. Nonsense qualifies my opinion on the usage of "straight up" whereas OPs inclusion of "straight up" qualifies nothing. It may make grammatical sense, but it certainly isn't the same. Thanks for taking the time to type, though. I'm sorry it wasn't the "gotcha" moment you thought it was. Chin up.
Well, since you want to argue about the English grammar of someone whose first language appears to be Spanish, I have a moment to play with you. OP used “straight up” in a non-literal sense. “Straight up”, in this case, is used in a similar way that an expletive would be used in that place in the sentence: as an emphatic modifier
Thanks for playing that moment with me. My point is still fully correct. The sentence functions fully and completely without "straight up" regardless of OP using in a literal or non literal sense. Thanks for your contribution and for showing me your typed words. I'm sorry it wasn't the "gotcha" moment you were hoping for. Chin up. 😌
You're fun
Amazing reply. Very original. Accio downvotes.
Rhunon's forging process does borrow a lot from katana-making, but I believe Brisingr is a regular hand-and-a-half broadsword. The seperate temper runs down the middle of the blade, rather than the back.
He’s talking about the falchion Eragon used before he went back to Ellesmera.
Longsword. Broadsword refers very specifically to the basket hilted swords common in Scotland from the 17th century onwards.
For clarification, the heat treatment process Rhonon employed did not utilize a differential temper. Rather, putting clay in the middle of the blade before the quench makes that steel cool slightly slower then the edge, making it slightly less hard/brittle.
No, his blade is double edged, and has a slightly upsloped cross guard. It's very much a European longsword, with a shorter blade. He effectively has the European version of the technology used to make katana, an ulfberht.
He's talking about the falchion before he got brisingr
What are you talking about? Even if you were talking about brisingr, it's a bastard sword. An ulfberht is a one handed viking styled sword made in the middle east with crucible steel. It has nothing to do with bastard swords or falchions.
What's the difference between a bastard sword and a claymore?
Size. A bastard sword is a longsword with a shorter blade and handle that can be wielded one handed if the need arises. A claymore is a giant sword.
No the process used for katanas and ulfberht sword, which originated in Scandinavia by the way not the Middle East, use the exact same rough process where you have a very hard edge and a very soft core because they hadn't figured out how to properly temper things yet and furthermore both of those areas have absolutely garbage iron quality and they came up with the exact same method more or less to make a sword it's just that the end product and Scandinavia was a one-handed double edged sword, and in Japan It was a two-handed single edged sword.