The Alþingi first met around the year 930 on the plain at Þingvellir, where chieftains gathered each summer to settle disputes and recite the law aloud from a rock. It continued in some form through centuries of Norwegian and Danish rule. Iceland did not become an independent republic until 1944, more than a thousand years after its parliament began sitting.
Why this oneA parliament that outlasted the country it belonged to, by a thousand years.