No matter what sword it is, no matter which hot key I set, the game forgets it after a few seconds. Everything else it remembers, it's just the swords and that is rather annoying for me as I'm constantly switching between bows and sword and board.

I might be experiencing a different bug, but it seems like my hotkey bug was ameliorated by always remembering to sheathe my weapon before I switched to another hotkeyed weapon.

It happens to me too. It seems to only happen with my sword for some reason, so I started using an axe and that fixed it (bizarre, right?) Hopefully this is fixed with a patch.