You find the best weapons at the forge

I prefer the unique weapons and my personal favorite 1 hand is the Mace of Molag Bal...it just oozes badass.

But the ones you find in the game do much less damage than ones you craft and improve yourself. IE, the best one handed weapon in the game would be a Dragonbone sword improved when you have about 300 in smithing (four pieces of armor at +25% (or more), plus a potion at +100%, plus 100 naturual points). Bonus points for Enchanting it via similiar means, especially if you double enchant it.

Which requires $19.99.

Then a Daedric sword, done the same. You don't even have to go to those lengths, an Ebony or Daedric sword, improved at the forge with 100 skill and no fancy enchanted smithing gear, with a good double-enchant (even without any fortify enchanting potions etc) will pretty much always be better than the vanilla Daedric Artefacts (I think you can improve Dawnbreaker at the forge, say, but its effect is mostly a strong fire enchantment, with a potentially annoying explosion triggered when you kill an undead NPC, and making them run away is often just a pain, as you have to chase them down to finish them off, it can come in handy for crowd control, but so can a full-strength Unrelenting Force.) Dawnbreaker is lighter than an Ebony sword, I guess, so that's a bit of an advantage, but the damage is about the same, and Daedric has a higher damage output than Ebony.

I have Insanity's Thegn, which shares it's stats with the Ebony sword and only requires the Steel smithing perk. Just because I have one of these doesn't mean I didn't struggled against spriggans, though.

That's because Spriggans are MEAN. And they can turn into a cloud of insects or something and regenerate health. MEAN.

My current character has been using an un-enhanced Ebony sword since about level 4 (currently at level 40) due to a lucky find, and it's still doing pretty well, although she recently was gifted a fire enchanted one by Ulfric and is mostly using that, now. That said, I'm in SkyRe, which changes a lot of stuff (like both damage output and armour ratings are WAY higher).

You found an Ebony Sword at level four? Bloody hell.

Only saying the unique ones becous making your own Dragon weapons or Sthalrim weapons (depands what Enchantment you want to use) can be pretty OP!

Daggers:

Blade of woe

Mehrunes Razor

Bound dagger (if having the perks and sneaky character. Found it effective if wanting souls and banish annoying astonach)

Mace:

Mace of Molag Baal (duh!)

War axe:

Dawnguard rune axe

Blades:

Chillrend

Dawnbreaker

Dragonbane

Bow:

Auriels bow

Dwarven black bow of fate

Nightgale bow

Zephyr (depands)

Greatswords:

Bloodskaal

Ebony Blade

Battleaxes:

Wuuthrad

Rueful axe

Warhammers:

Vulendrung

Dawnguard rune warhammer

Champion's Cudgel

I crafted my Thegn (Insanity's sword which shares it's stats with the Ebony sword) at Level 2. And then I crafted a Stamford (Dwarven Sword) and used it until I get thane'd in Falkreath, where I started using the former.

It was on Solstheim, had Teldryn Sero and Jenassa, or I'd never have survived whichever barrow it was (Bloodskal, I think). Might have been a bit after level 4 but definitely well before 10.

I think Raven Rock Mine has some fixed ebony weapons even at level 1. I know is a deathlord archer there when the player is level 1 but I can't remember if he had Ancient Nord or Ebony.

Makes sense that they'd have Ebony in there, really. Llerethis still isn't strong enough to use the Bloodskal Blade, I haven't quite decided when she will be, but I reckon when she gets to around 50 or 60 in Pumping Iron (still kicking myself for not taking a screenshot of her in robes/common clothes at the start, I know there's only fairly minimal difference between the two ends of the slider on female characters, but still.)

So I found out that the craftable (by mod) version of Harkon's sword does 2 more points of damage than Insanity's Thegn. Meaning it does as much damage as a Dragonbone sword.