The East End and West End (Bokmål: østkanten og vestkanten, Nynorsk: austkanten og vestkanten) are used as names for the two parts of Oslo, Norway, formed by the economic and socially segregating separation line that has historically passed along the street Uelands gate. The Akerselva river is often seen as a boundary between west and east, but that can be misleading, as there are working-class neighbourhoods on both sides of the river.
The West End was built in the 1840s, and had since the 17th century been a common land area, with the area behind the castle as an exit point. The East End grew around the new industry and along the passageways to the east. Around 1890, the division between east and west was prominent and most districts of the city were marked by class, either by working-class or bourgeois class. This division was reflected in architecture, but also in politics in that the Conservative Party and the Labour Party were, taken together, much more dominant than in other parts of Norway. The dialects have traditionally been quite different, and there has been a sharp distinction line between the sociolects of the two parts of the city, but this has somewhat diminished in the latest decades. Youths who have grown up in one part of the city usually have little experience of the other.
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