Several Norwegian schools have rescheduled this month's mid-term examinations to avoid a conflict with Justin Bieber's arrival in Oslo. Five schools in the fishing port of Ålesund decided to adjust their timetable to accommodate local Beliebers who planned to attend the singer's gigs.

"We find it regrettable, but we preferred to move forward the Norwegian exams to avoid problems," Roar Aasen, headmaster at Blindheim secondary school, told AFP. Like the other schools in Ålesund, Blindheim feared that dozens of their students would skip their exams to make the seven-hour trek to Oslo, where Bieber will perform on 16 and 17 April.

About half of the girls at Aasen's school planned to attend Bieber's shows, according to NRK. "We considered that this was a battle that we could not win," Aasen said. He and other headmasters decided to change the schedule "three or four months ago", he explained, "when we found out many students had already bought their tickets".

As the country's officials learned last year, Bieber is extremely popular in Norway. The Canadian star caused pandemonium in downtown Oslo when he played an outdoor gig in May 2012; while police strained to control the crowd, the concert ballooned into one of the largest in Norwegian history.

Still, not everyone is making concessions for Bieber's teenaged admirers. Oslo's schools commissioner said they would not be cancelling classes, nor will Beliebers be accommodated in Bergen. "Our school premises are not gripped by any such 'Bieber fever,'" Bergen International School principal June Murison told the Foreigner newspaper. Other headmasters said they had only received one or two applications for Bieber-related leave.

According to Norway's minister of education and research, the government does not intend to intervene either for or against Bieber's smitten hordes. "We've all been 14-years-old and know that interests can be intense," Kristin Halvorsen told the Associated Press. "The local schools have the responsibility to schedule the local midterms, and if they think there is any reason to change the dates, they have authority to do so."

While Ålesund's school-board bends over backward for the sake of Bieber's shows, the singer's pet monkey continues to languish in a German animal sanctuary. Yesterday, representatives for the Munich shelter said they had been in contact with Bieber's manager, Scooter Braun, and hope to resolve the situation before officials' end-of-April deadline.