you are taking the directions too literal/as if it meant southeast of barrowholm
ugdenbog is big,
so it’s indeed NE ugdenbog, if one wanted to debate general/non specific vague direction descriptions
you’re not the first that caught this
here’s another one where someone disagree with the map directions for a different quest Aetherial Corpse Wagons - North/East/South mixed up - #12 by Gnomish_Inquisition
Dev also mentioned that not everything is super “exact”, but also due to things changing during development, so a position might shift slightly, and then be less not super exact
unsure if they intended for the “vague” nature of just calling it NE ugdenbog as is, and just didn’t consider referring to it as east/SE of barrowholm, or because the travellers at some point during devs actually wasn’t that close to barrowholm