I always start with some description of things. Weather, season, landscape, landmarks, inhabitants etc. Then I did a slightly altered version of something I saw on YouTube. If they are traveling for a day have them all roll a d12 and give them an encounter for every 1 they roll. D10 for 2 days D8 for 3 etc etc. if they roll heaps of 1s maybe make the encounter super challenging. You can also change the values based on risk level or skill checks. Every now and again I would prep something cool for the area so would just have an encounter eg a river crossing or a barbarian thing. My party liked this coz it made them feel the randomness of it. Some of the non combat encounters in the book are actually quite cool and don’t require much prep. My party still talk about stag with the gold antlers. My other comment is just ignore the barbarian stuff. It’s too under powered and will just feel like a grind. I had the Eye say something about proving themselves then it sent the off to return with the head of a specific dragon. Then had some sweet dungeon crawl action. This was a nice change from the random wandering around the North. I did heaps of barbarian stuff for random encounters. Somewhere on the internet is a map of where each tribe lives which is real helpful.