Swords in a historical context were analogous to sidearms - built for flexibility of use and ease of transport, as well as taking on the role of a status symbol in a lot of feudal and early-modern societies. They are inextricably tied to notions of heroism in most cultures, yes, but also to concepts and institutions such the nobility, monarchy, and the existence of a wealthy warrior class. The role of a sword as a weapon of choice in fiction, then, serves as a subtextual elevation of the user’s importance; they have been marked out by destiny, the divine, social expectation, circumstance, or any other number of things, as special. Important. Powerful.
Warhammers in the European tradition were a response to advancements in plate armor technology: by the late Middle Ages, plate armor granted such significant protection to those lucky enough to lay their hands on a full suit that they posed an almost insurmountable threat to an unarmored fighter with armed with only a sword, club, or rudimentary spear. Late-medieval full plate is one of the purest symbols of power projection and power preservation in military history— in fiction, they armor the status and power of the sword, stripped of the romantic and heroic ideals granted to the sword by its storied history.
As a weapon specifically designed to respond to and defeat plate armor, the warhammer can be viewed as its symbolic antithesis: where plate armor embodies the idea of unassailable strength and martial dominance, the warhammer as a weapon evokes the destruction and dismantling of said strength— a weapon designed to pierce, tear apart and sunder the idea that being powerful and being untouchable are synonymous. Where the sword symbolizes elevating a person to power, and plate armor symbolizes power seeking to perpetuate itself, the warhammer symbolizes the leveling of tools and structures that would convince us that power cannot be challenged.
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